Forward To Death

I know people who are sexually aroused by cutting and being punched and tied up. BDSM.

You really have to look beyond the one-dimensional mentality that "it's attention seeking, and thats all there is to it".

I mean, everyone has the right to be ignorant, and that's about as far as a discussion like this can go. I don't think it would be easy for anyone to change each other's opinion.

Sparky

or a desperate cry for help

Goofle

Nah, it's just a healthy dose of sadomasochism to get you through the day.

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hip hop bunny hop

I don't view sensitivity as innately superior to other attitudes.

If you mean masochism in the sexual sense; that can be manifested in a few ways.

If we take masochism as humiliation, isn't that about the spectacle of humiliation? Even if it's taking place in a private, personal setting or situation, the masochist has internalized attitudes towards this behavior which allow them to feel humiliation.

Masochism & self mutilation just strikes me as a secular form of Christianity and the bizarre ways that religion has manifested repentance. As far as my feelings on repentance in general, Montaigne's similarly named essay (link) says it all better than I can.

In that past I took courses in psychology, which I found to be essentially useless. The college areas of study I found most valuable were literature & anthropology.

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Have mercy on the poor.

Forward To Death

You're making this too convenient for your own argument. Masochism is to derive pleasure from pain or humiliation. On top of this, it's a stretch by all means to get attention seeking out of an extremely cherrypicked scenario of masochism. There's no humiliation involved in many cases, you just straight up enjoy pain.

midnight rain

Are you?

hip hop bunny hop

$5 says she is.

So, we're in agreement that my depiction of the humiliation aspect of masochism is relatively accurate?

As far as your other point; I concede there may be some individuals who commit self-harm because they genuinely enjoy pain. However, I've yet to encounter or read about someone who gets off on making superficial cuts to their wrist in a mock suicidal manner.

__________________
Have mercy on the poor.

Forward To Death

Yes.

I think the assumption that it's "mock suicide" is where the line between attention seeking and masochistic is drawn. If thats the assumption, it's most definitely an attempt to seek attention one way or another. Even so, I believe someone mentioned how cutting could also be viewed as symbolic. It's a complex issue in that case, but theoretically, it doesn't even have to be symbolic. You might just have developed a fixation with cutting your arms.

Regardless, I don't think it's simply put as attention seeking.

anticipation

Self harm is essentially identical to any other addiction. Human brain development is stressed during infancy due to either proximal abandonment/outright abuse/denial of attention. Infants who suffer these stressors naturally seek out pleasure and fulfillment in something, as humanity is a highly emotional and sensitive species, and when they find it the brain is hardwired to "go back to the well" so to speak. If the body is conditioned to find pleasure and compulsively engage it, then self harm is just an expression of this epigenetic adaptive trait. Early developmental environment determines why a person hurts themselves. It is a cry for attention, but just not as people usually see it.

People who suffer from addictions are virtually all abuse as children, and their ideas of the world are that it is cold and callous, to avoid intimate relationships, not to trust caregivers and see the world as an unsafe place. The implicit memories of infants evolve into needing to find that acceptance somewhere, be it self harm, drugs, sex, power, money, etc. Self harm is a sign of a child coming to terms with how harsh they perceive the world to be. Gratification is addictive to these people because they have been seeking it without avail since birth.

jayshreddz

i have done self harm a lot. i knowingly eat a lot of mcdonalds and enjoy it. what's the difference?