Most counsellors, psychotherapists and analysts will, at some time or other, work with people who self-harm. Yet there has not been, to my knowledge, such a comprehensive study of the literature on the topic. Fiona Gardner goes some way to rectifying this in her book entitled Self-Harm: A Psychotherapeutic Approach.

Her main aim in the book is to unravel the different meanings behind the act, usually cutting, which leads to self-harm. In our culture today this is prevalent among young people, and so her clinical focus is on those between the ages of 15 and 21, who are prone to cutting repeatedly. These are predominantly girls. She draws on her many years of experience of working with those who self-harm both as a social worker in social services and family guidance, and as a psychoanalytical psychotherapist in voluntary organizations, a public sector clinic and in private practice. For the purposes of this book she took for her study 51 people who attended a clinic and of these 33