Cutting

Known as the illness of the 1990s, close to two million Americans and possibly more suffer from the psychological disorder of self-mutilation. The most prominent public admission was that of Princess Diana. Written for the self-mutilator, parents, friends, and therapists, Levenkron unravels step by step the mindset of the self-mutilator, explains why the disorder manifests in self-harming behaviors, and, most of all, describes how the self-mutilator can be helped. Through riveting 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 can't stay focused in a relationship of any depth. Cutting tells the reader where to turn for help and offers important skills the self-mutilator must learn - what Levenkron calls the "Attachment-Dependency Trust Axis" - in order to overcome the affliction.

Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Mental Health. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.