Self-harm and identity formation

Certain fields of knowledge have stood out in the study of self-harm including psychiatry psychology and psychoanalysis. These fields of knowledge differentiate acts of self-harm as part of a specific culture or religious ritual from self-harming practices that are attributed to pathologies. The latter are considered acts of self-destruction produced by people who need specialist intervention to stop hurting themselves. We start from the assumption that self-harm is a mode of subjectivation constructed and transformed by different discourses depending on the sociocultural context in which it occurs. The intention of this work is to analyse messages from people who self-harm and discuss their experience in virtual communities.