Repeated Self-Cutting: An Impulse Neurosis

Repeated self-cutting represents a distorted form of autoerotic activity. The self-cutter opens up symbolically on her skin multiple little female genitals, the primus inter pares of erogenous zones, which become available for all sorts of autoerotic manipulations. The psychosexual fixation, the irresistibility of the impulse to cut, and the fusion of instinctual impulses with the defenses directed against them, all involved in self-cutting, should support the classification of this behavior as an impulse neurosis along with kleptomania and pyromania.