Cutting: Understanding and Overcoming Self-Mutilation

By Steven Levenkron

Book Overview

In this work, author Steven Levenkron explains the phenomenon of self-mutilation. Written for sufferers, parents, friends and therapists, the book aims to unravel step by step the mindset of the self-mutilator. Le venkron explains why the disorder manifests in self-harming behaviour and describes how the self-mutilator can be helped. Through case-studies and conversations with his patients, the profile of the self-mutilator emerges: someone who is typically fearful of people and abandonment, whose attachments are hostile or tenuous at best, who lacks interpersonal trust and who often cannot stay focused in a relationship of any depth. In a voice that is compassionate and reassuring, Cutting tells the reader where to turn for help and offers information on important skills the self-mutilator must learn - what Levenkron calls the Attachment-Dependency Trust Axis - in order to overcome the affliction.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0393027414
• ISBN13: 9780393027419
• Release Date: January 1998
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 1.06 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 5.8" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

Cutting

I found this book right on about reasons for cutting and great insights into why, when, etc. adults cut themsleves. It is non-judgemental and is great for cutters and therapists and loved-ones to read if they really want to understand. It was the first time I ever felt like I wasn't totally alone with this horrible secret and the first time I felt like someone understood and wasn't judging me for it.

Excellent book packed with great information

After reading reviews that said Steven Levenkron was "arrogant," I had doubts about buying this book. However, I didn't find him arrogant at all - rather, he was calm, clear, concise, and very knowledgable on the subject. The book is rich with case studies, which I found very helpful to use as examples, as well as interesting on their own. Being a former cutter myself, I think he hit the nail right on the head when he described...

Understanding

Understanding as in the title is just what this book does help you and other people understand what self-mutilation and what it does to people. I am only 17 and I have been a self-mutilater for nine long years. I got this book to help myself, but not only that but it has help my mother understand why I did this and it would not just go away over night. My mother has learned alot but must about how to help me treat this problem...

A Book of Hope and Healing

I found "Cutting" to be an incredibly well written book by a therapist who cares about those suffering from a disease that may sometimes feel debilitating and hopeless. His message is about empowerment. He works to empower not only women and girls, but all people struggling with SI and anorexia. I have heard him on the radio and in a lecture and found him to be not only knowledgeable, and experienced, but a compassionate humanitarian...

A powerful and insightful book on self-injury!

As someone who suffers from self-mutilation I can say that this book is amazing. The stories were all so real and something that most self-mutilators have gone through. This book offers wonderful steps for recovery and offered hope to the hopeless. It is hard to find books and material on this subject, especially ones you can relate to and understand. Levenkron does a wonderful job at explaining the many types of "cutters"...