Self-harm

“ Yet my one great fault of intense self-consciousness haunts me still, mars my enjoyment, unnerves me often in the very moment of action, and makes me feel every day the evil brought upon a too sensitive disposition, when defects, whether physical or mental, are made a theme for ridicule and banter, without regard to the present pain and future loss such a course is only too sure to entail.—Temple Bar. ”

“ Teach him that when he handles or excites the [393] sexual organs all parts of the body suffer, because they are connected by nerves that run throughout the system; this is why it is called 'self-abuse.' The whole body is abused when this part of the body is handled or excited in any manner whatever. Teach them to shun all children who indulge in this loathsome habit, or all children who talk about these things. The sin is terrible, and is, in fact, worse than lying or stealing. For, although these are wicked and will ruin their souls, yet this habit of self-abuse will ruin both soul and body. ”

“ The bloodless lips, the dull, heavy eye surrounded with dark rings, the nerveless hand, the blanched cheek, the short breath, the old, faded look, the weakened memory and silly irritability tell the story all too plainly. The same evil result follows, ending perhaps in death, or worse, in insanity. Aside from the injury the girl does herself by yielding to this habit, there is one other reason which appeals to the conscience, and that is, self-abuse is an offence against moral law—it is putting to a vile, selfish use the organs which were given for a high, sacred purpose. ”

“ The self-inflicted injury which does not entirely tend toward self-annihilation has, moreover, no other choice in our present state of civilization than to hide itself behind the accidental, or to break through in a simulation of spontaneous illness. ”

“ My illness, I well knew, had been entirely brought on by myself by such negligence of my own health, as I had felt even at the time to be wrong. Had I died, it would have been self-destruction. ”

“ I don't speak of such trifles as tears, heartaches, sleepless nights, fevers of jealousy and despair, sacrifices, or discomforts, but of real genuine self-torment and mental torture which only this passion is capable of inflicting on its victims. ”

“ If they saw us turn from the dainty meal, and wear a look of distress and fear, in the midst of everything that to them indicates comfort and security, I imagine that they could only wonder, till they knew for themselves how bodily distress excludes pleasure from outward objects, and how the mental weaknesses which prevail amidst an unnatural and difficult mode of life convert the most innocent and ordinary occurrences into occasions of apprehension, or of self-distrust or self-disgust. ”

“ Where the body is enfeebled by the depressing influences of vitiated air and bodily defilement, the mind, almost of necessity, takes the same low, unhealthy tone. Self-respect is lost; a stupid, inert, languid feeling overpowers the system; the character becomes depraved; and too often—eager to snatch even a momentary enjoyment, to feel the blood bounding in the veins,—the miserable victim flies to the demon of strong drink for relief; hence misery, infamy, shame, crime, and wretchedness. ”

“ Under the strain of this continually impending doom and by the sleeplessness to which I now condemned myself, ay, even beyond what I had thought possible to man, I became, in my own person, a creature eaten up and emptied by fever, languidly weak both in body and mind, and solely occupied by one thought: the horror of my other self. ”

“ When the habitual narcissistic gratifications that come from being adored, given special treatment, and admiring the self are threatened, the results may be depression, hypochondriasis, anxiety, shame, self-destructiveness, or rage directed toward any other person who can be blamed for the troubled situation. ”

“ Granted that there is much deplorable pain in the world from ill-health, loss of money, loss of reputation, misconduct of those nearest to us, or what not, and granted that in some cases these causes do drive men to actual self-destruction, yet suffering such as this happens to a comparatively small number, and occupies comparatively a small space in the lives of those to whom it does happen. ”

“ It becomes a magnet, a loadstone to draw you. Your constant habit of associating it in your mind with the past, creates around it an atmosphere which is a part of your being and welds you to it, so that you, the house, and the deed, become one mighty monster, inseparable. The idea that you can expiate the deed by this self-torture is vain. You can neither confer good upon yourself nor your victim. ”

“ For if our regard for the sufferings of others is proportioned to our regard for our own sufferings, inasmuch as our self-love is the foundation and measure of our powers of sympathy, a man’s disregard for the sufferings of others—in other words his cruelty—is likely to be the exact reflection of his disregard for suffering in his own person, or, in other words, of his physical courage. ”

“ Thus, in H. O., attacks of recurrent nausea and fear almost prohibiting social intercourse were always due to thoughts of self-disgust hidden in the fringe.
Let us take a concrete case, that of a person who has a pathological fear and who, as we know is often the case, can give no explanation of his viewpoint. The fear may be that of fainting, or of thunderstorms, of a particular disease, say cancer, or of so-called “unreality” attacks, or what not. This so-called “fear” is of course an idea of self or other 355object linked with, or which occasions as a reaction, the strong emotion of fear. ”

“ Faults of character, reasoning and living are unsparingly exposed and appropriate remedies suggested, and he is shown how unmanly his self-torturing reproaches are, and how futile is remorse unless transmuted into reform. ”

“ At this important stage of life, when self-control, hygiene, mental and moral influence, are of vital importance, the fatal results of his weakened will and a corrupt society, ensue. Opportunity tempts his wavering innocence, thoughtless or vicious companions undertake to ‘form’ him, laugh at his scruples, sneer at his conscience, excite him with allurements. Or a deadly counsel meets him—meets him from those he is bound to respect. The most powerful morbid stimulant that exists—a stimulant to every drop of his seething young blood—is advised viz., the resort to prostitutes. ”

“ We have treated patients, who, from this cause, had renounced their bright hopes, lost their buoyant spirits, and, becoming subject to superstitious fears, had given themselves up, night and day, to devotions and penance. It often happens that the victims of this deep dejection and morbid feeling of self-abasement, are persons not only of good moral character, but of high religious attainments, and their painful exhibitions of fear, distrust, and gloom, originate in physical rather than in spiritual causes. ”

“ Even the fearfully rapid encroachments of a deadly disease do not, in too many instances, give the requisite prudence; and the unhappy victim sinks speedily into the grave, with little less than the crime of self-murder upon her head. ”

“ Such human beings as are near to me I desire to experience suffering, neglect, sickness, ill-treatment, humiliation—I hope that they may become acquainted with extreme self-contempt, the torture of self-distrust, the misery of defeat. ”

“ What was done was to make the sick harmless up to a certain point, to destroy the incurable by means of themselves, to turn the milder cases severely on to themselves, to give their resentment a backward direction ("man needs but one thing") , and to exploit similarly the bad instincts of all sufferers with a view to self-discipline, self-surveillance, self-mastery. It is obvious that there can be no question at all in the case of a "medication" of this kind, a mere emotional medication, of any real healing of the sick in the physiological sense ”

“ When I look strictly into my deceitful and wicked heart, I find it so full of this abominable vice, that I regard myself with horror and amazement; and yet perhaps the next moment, indulge in airy schemes and self-complacency. Sure there is not in the whole universe, so vain and sinful a wretch as I am! ”

“ Cherishing evil passions and malicious purposes, this mind is not a healer, but engenders disease and death.
I would sooner be exposed to every plague on earth, than endure the cumulative effects of guilty conscience. The abiding consciousness of wrong-doing tends to destroy the ability to do right. If sin is not repented of, and is not lessening, it is hastening on to physical and moral self-destruction. We are conquered by the moral punishments we incur, and by the ills we dread.
Disease is a fear expressed, not so much by the lips, as in the functions of the body. ”

“ Would you wean a man from sensual excesses by the inevitable consequences to which they lead?—What holds more antipathy to pleasure than pain? The mind given up to self-indulgence revolts at suffering, and throws it from it as an unaccountable anomaly, as a piece of injustice when it comes. ”

“ If necessary, I could show that many human activities and most human institutions are symptomatic of the long drawn-out diseases of self-suppression and self-annihilation. Mind, I speak of the spiritual self and not that usually confused with a corporeal nature. ”

“ Worries either are or are not groundless. Of those that have a basis, many are exaggerated. It has occurred to me to utilize as an antidote an appeal to the same great law that originally excited the instinctive involuntary reaction known as fear— the law of self-preservation. ”

“ The human eye never rests upon a sadder sight than a ruined soul, a mind shattered and debased by vice.
The Results of One Transgression.—The following case is a good illustration of the fact that a long course of transgression is not necessary to occasion the most serious results. A young man from an Eastern State who visited us for treatment was suffering with the usual consequences of self-abuse, but he asserted in the most emphatic manner that he had never committed the act of self-pollution but once in his life. ”

“ All actions of{321} despair, tearing the beard, beating hands and feet together, rage at one’s own health, and finally suicide may ensue. If the mother kills her own child, this action belongs to the same series as self-damage through despair. ”

“ And all the while possibly the cause of this sudden outbreak, in the man from whom one would least have expected it, is simply the poignant hysterical craving for self-expression, the unconscious yearning for himself, the desire to assert himself, to assert his to assert his crushed personality, a desire which suddenly takes possession of him and reaches the pitch of fury, of spite, of mental aberration, of fits and nervous convulsions. ”

“ Bodily Self-seeking.—All the ordinary useful reflex actions and movements of alimentation and defence are acts of bodily self-preservation. Fear and anger prompt to acts that are useful in the same way. Whilst if by self-seeking we mean the providing for the future as distinguished from maintaining the present, we must class both anger and fear, together with the hunting, the acquisitive, the home-constructing and the tool-constructing instincts, as impulses to self-seeking of the bodily kind. ”

“ This notion of death coming from without has again two phases, one with anxiety where normality is so far retained that the patient's instinct of self-preservation produces fear, and a second phase where this in [199] stinct lapses and the patient so far accepts the idea of being killed as to speak of it with indifference. The next step in regression is marked by the spoiled-child conduct, interest being so self-centered as to lead to autoerotic habits and the perverse reactions which we call negativism. ”

“ Events that threaten the impulse of self-preservation of the individual, such as misfortunes, shocks, losses, tend to bring about psychopathic states, on account of the aroused fear instinct, on account of the impulse of self-preservation, and sudden inhibition [356] of the stores of reserve energy. Events that may lead to dissolution of personality are, hence, attended with intense anxiety. ”

“ From time to time we avenge ourselves for all our enforced concealment and compulsory self-restraint. We emerge from our cells with terrible faces, our words and deeds are then explosions, and it is not beyond the verge of possibility that we perish through ourselves. ”

“ I have never for more than the briefest space of time contemplated self-destruction as I have hinted at several times. The thought has crossed my mind in my darkest moods, but I am not a- 38 - coward and to-day must go a step further and say that I’ll fight to the finish against all outside difficulties, as well as ill health and natural defects of temperament and heredity. From now on any departures from a certain standard until I have changed that standard by thought and experience, I will consider in their proper light of weaknesses to be overcome. ”

“ Self, therefore, grows to be so prominent an object with them that they cannot but present it to the face of every casual passer-by. There is a pleasure—perhaps the greatest of which the sufferer is susceptible—in displaying the wasted or ulcerated limb, or the cancer in the breast; and the fouler the crime, with so much the more difficulty does the perpetrator prevent it from thrusting up its snake-like head to frighten the world; for it is that cancer, or that crime, which constitutes their respective individuality. ”

“ He had, moreover, at this moment, when all the energies of his nature suddenly burst out, a power of deliberate, complacent, and pitiless moral self-vivisection, a power of performing upon his character such cutting and ripping-open operations as he thought beneficial to himself, which makes one think of the abnormal faculty of enduring pain, the abnormal and almost cruel satisfaction in examining the mechanism of one's own suffering, occasionally displayed by hysterical women ”