The First Time

Under what circumstances does the first injury occur?

This question falls within the sociological study of deviant behaviors, which, broadly defined, studies behaviors that are socially stigmatized because they transgress the norms of a social group. As Patricia and Peter Adler point out, self-injurers enter the two categories of lonely deviance developed by Joel Best and David Luckenbill: they are loners, given that they proceed without needing relations with similar others, and they are individual deviants, in that they engage in deviant activities by themselves. Consequently, for the sociologist accustomed to initially looking at the impact of groups and institutions on individuals, this practice remains mysterious.

As Best and Luckenbill suggest, solitary deviants are thus socialized into their deviance by "society at large," rather than by supposedly deviant groups inaugurating a change in the individual's mindset toward norms. The first step to understanding this difference in the case of self-injury is to explore how the first instance of self-injury occurs, and this chapter will outline some analytical categories to account for it.

What Happened?

Many of the participants of this study expressed a haziness surrounding the first instance of self-injury. Judith, with whom I conducted several interviews, is exemplary of this:

Interviewer: Can you tell me when you started self-injuring?

Judith: Uh ... I was in ninth grade, in fact ... honestly, it's a bit of a blur, how I started ... It started ... Not much eh ... it was ... At first, I didn't even know what it was ... [silence]

Judith does not remember exactly what happened. Indeed, while most participants remember their first injury, many do not perceive a specific reason for the act. Even if a significant event occurs that provokes the urge to hurt oneself, the motivation, like the choice of this practice rather than another, is completely vague. There is no reason to assume that the attack of the body is, in itself, the motivation for this type of activity. On this point, I share David Grange's criticism against the teleological analyses of self-aggression: "behaviors such as bulimia/ anorexia, alcoholism, drug addiction, self-neglect ... have, in practice, a deleterious effect on the health of the person who does it. ... It is a fact, but nothing indicates that this is their vocation."

Understanding the first self-wound, and moreover the management of its enunciation in an interview situation, leads us to look into a posteriori — constructed explanations. Amandine was nineteen years old at the time of our discussion, in March 2008. This young Quebecois explains to me:

[Instant messaging]

Amandine: I started almost five years ago. I do not remember how the idea came to my mind, I grabbed a compass and engraved the word DEAD on my wrist ... without knowing what self-injury was.... I had great difficulties with my parents, I was in major suicidal depression, I went to PH [Psychiatric Hospital] for that and I went out ... I continued SI [Self-Injuring] after that....

Interviewer: Ok ... and you remember why you wanted to do it? Why the word "DEAD"?

Amandine: Why I wanted to do it, in the beginning, I think, was to make a concrete gesture toward my death ... and the word "dead" because it was my goal ... later I made five suicide attempts.

Interviewer: It was like a kind of training?

Amandine: No ... I don't remember exactly that time ... but I know that I quickly discovered the good it did ... I switched to cuts after, it was much more liberating than simple letters with the compass.

Unable to remember her precise motives, Amandine introduces an "I think" before "to make a concrete gesture toward my death." Here, we can perceive the influence of her studies in psychology on her narrative. This turn of phrase and the expression, "I was in major suicidal depression," recall how mental health professionals talk and their inclination to interpret actions through unconscious reasons. Moreover, Amandine's use of the expression, "I think, was to make a concrete gesture toward my death," means both that she has developed this interpretation retrospectively and that she feels as though unconscious motivations were at work.

The initial enigma persists: was the first injury a purely "spontaneous" act? The elusive origin of this act is even more troubling because the first time takes on a particular importance within the self-harming trajectory. From this initial act, individuals realize that this behavior provides them with relief, and a sense of dependence develops. Over time, self-injury becomes a motivation in itself. But how should we study the motivations of the first wound when the people concerned express difficulty discussing it?

The Study of Motives

Howard Becker writes about people entering deviant careers, stating that "people usually think of deviant acts as motivated. They believe that the person who commits a deviant act, even for the first time (and perhaps especially for the first time), does so purposely. His purpose may or may not be entirely conscious, but there is a motive force behind it." This de facto situation is not confined to illegal or illegitimate acts. Who knows the true motives of their daily practices, if such motives exist at all? Who is really aware, for example, of the reasons driving their initial participation in a leisure activity or, for that matter, their involvement in a given professional sector?

We generally assume that when someone develops a deviant practice, they have justification for it, while simultaneously we share an ignorance toward the motivations of our own socially accepted activities. In this regard, the participants' narratives are likely to be much more elaborate than one given by an individual asked about a behavior deemed socially legitimate, such as playing ping-pong on a Sunday afternoon. Here, a justification by taste ("I like it") may appear to be sufficient. But because they are engaged in unusual behaviors, the people I met had already reflected on a way to justify their practice, prior to the interviews. They are somehow socially summoned to hold a reflexive posture toward their behavior.

Moreover, I believe that the more socially illegitimate a behavior is, the more that it is suspected to rely on deep, unconscious, and inaccessible motivations. In our case, this implies that the quest for a motivation regarding the first injury constitutes also,...