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Through a clinical case study, this paper explores the peak in girls' suicide attempts at ages 13 and 14 and offers a relational interpretation of girls' suicidal behaviors as symbolic and indirect speech, reflecting a language that is deeply encultured. In early adolescence, girls learn that if they threaten to harm or endanger themselves or actually do so, people take notice. Girls then discover the communicative value of threatening or enacting harm, danger, or violence against themselves. Thus they “learn
Carol Gilligan, Ph.D. recently moved to New York City, where she is University Professor at New York University. Her latest book is The Birth of Pleasure.
Lisa Machoian, Ed.D. is a Lecturer on Education in Human Development and Psychology, Harvard University Graduate School of Education.
Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the conference of Psychological Trauma: Maturational Processes and Therapeutic Interventions, Boston University Medical School and Massachusetts Mental Health Center, March 1998; and at the Biennial Peter Blos Lecture, Jewish Board of Family and Children's Services, New York City, December 1998. A version of the case study is in the doctoral dissertation of Lisa Machoian (1998).
The authors thank, in alphabetical order, Blair Barone, Psy.D., Holly Gelfond, Ed.D., Francis Pescosolido, Ph.D., Elizabeth Rice-Smith, Psy.D., and Bessel A. van der Kolk, M.D. for their support of this work.
to speak the language of violence.” The clinical case illustrates how girls who speak this language can be called manipulative and not taken seriously, but also how, when their communication is heard and interpreted relationally, it can explain why girls' suicidality peaks in early adolescence and why it is associated with hope.