This paper presents a discussion regarding the practice of self-mutilation, highlighting the stories of young women (between 15 and 21 years old) attending a Mental Health Center. Such attitudes are the act of causing wounds in their own bodies, such as cuts, scratches, burns or perforations, in a conscious way - but, in these actions, there is no desire of suicide, although it is common to notice suicidal ideations in these patients’ speeches. The reports about this behavior are shown by fragments of speeches, registered after psychological treatment, which delineate the description of feelings externalized in a therapeutic setting. The questions are discussed from psychoanalytical conceptions about jouissance and masochism, emphasizing propositions by Freud and Lacan, focusing the following issue: what is the function of self-caused pain - and self-injured body scars - for the psychic dynamics of the patients with self-mutilation history?
Self-mutilation; Masochism; Melancholy; Psychoanalysis; Mental health