Cutting: Understanding and Overcoming Self-Mutilation

Steven Levenkron

Overview

Cutting takes the reader through the psychological experience of the person who seeks relief from mental pain and anguish in self-inflicted physical pain. Steven Levenkron traces the components that predispose a personality to becoming a self-mutilator: genetics, family experience, childhood trauma, and parental behavior.

Written for the self-mutilator, parents, friends, and therapists, Levenkron explains why the disorder manifests in self-harming behaviors and, most of all, describes how the self-mutilator can be helped.

"With many examples from his practice, Levenkron provides clear and comprehensive information on the causes and effective treatments of this mysterious disorder, specific advice for therapists, and an encouraging sense of hope for patients and their families." — Publishers Weekly

"Cutting casts an eye on the emotional pains behind a dark adolescent practice." — Salon

• National radio and television interviews
• Featured on the Family Channel and Fox News Channel
• Off-the-book-page features
• Author lectures

Steven Levenkron is a psychotherapist in private practice. He is the author of the best-selling The Best Little Girl in the World, a novel that illuminates the nature of anorexia nervosa and bulimia, and most recently, The Luckiest Girl in the World, a novel about a self-mutilator.

ISBN: 0-393-31938-5
1999
256 pages