Self-Injuries along History: Definitions and representations of self-inflicted wounds

Abstract

This chapter explores how self-inflicted wounds have been interpreted by doctors and psychiatrists since the Middle Age, in France and North America. It describes significant variations in the representation of self-injury, following the evolution of medical conceptions over time, and identifies the First World War as a turning point in this history, as French psychiatrists (to the contrary of US ones) then started assessing whether self-injurers would "simulate" their self-injury to avoid being sent to the front.