Researcher uncovers the history of self-harm in Britain

A new book by Dr Sarah Chaney from Queen Mary University of London charts the delicate and often misunderstood history of self-harm in Britain. Taking the reader from the Victorian era to modern Britain, Psyche on the Skin challenges the idea that self-harm is a phenomenon that can be attributed to 'how we live now'. Dr Chaney, a historian of human emotion, said: 'It was in the late Victorian era that people began to make links between different acts that we later categorised as self-harm. On the face of it, there's no obvious reason why someone attempting to cut off their own hand should be the same as someone pulling out their hair. Yet the notion that we can clumsily lump everything together has lingered since the 1880s.' Dr Chaney rejects the idea that self-harm has a universal explanation. She recounts the wildly divergent ways in which self-harm has been represented and understood by society through the ages. 'Our thinking about self-harm is faulty.