On Self-Esteem and Self-Harm; Selfies and Self-Destruction

Keith Negley: Self-Harm (2019)

keithnegley.com

 

 

I. 

 

Self-harm is an interesting phenomenon: one that the German philosopher Byung-Chul Han relates to the terror of authenticity, i.e., a neoliberal imperative that "intensifies narcissistic self-reference".*

 

For Han, there is a healthy (non-pathological) form of self-love, but narcissism is distinct from it. For one thing, the narcissist is blind to the Other: "The narcissistic subject perceives the world only in shadings of itself" [21].     

 

And that's not good: not only does the world soon becomes boring when everything is the Same, but excessive narcissism has a profoundly damaging effect on the individual. Ultimately, we need other people to make us feel good about ourselves. 

 

For the Other is a gratifying authority. Without such a figure to love, praise, acknowledge and appreciate us, bang goes our self-esteem.

 

And that's not good either. For according to Han, lack of self-esteem underlies self-harm and the act - I almost wrote art - of cutting oneself with a knife, razor, or broken bottle "is not only a ritual of self-punishment for one's own feelings of inadequacy [...] but also a cry for love" [23] 

 

I'm not sure of that last claim, but let's hear the good professor out:

 

"The sense of emptiness is a basic symptom of depression and borderline personality disorder. Borderliners are often unable to feel themselves; only when they cut themselves do they feel anything. For the depressive performance subject, the self is a heavy burden. It is tired of itself. Entirely incapable of stepping outside itself, it becomes absorbed in itself, which paradoxically results in an emptying and erosion of the self. Isolated in its mental enclosure, trapped in itself, it loses any connection to the Other." [23-4]

 

If you deny negative thoughts and feelings any form of expression, they eventually come back to bite you. And yet, of course, the elimination of all negativity is "a hallmark of contemporary society" [24] which is designed to be a safe space, free from all forms of hate speech (in case someone is offended) and all types of conflict (in case someone gets hurt). 

 

But just as sometimes people need to express hateful ideas - not because that's what they really think, but so that they don't have to think such thoughts any longer - so too do they need a degree of conflict in their lives: "It is only from conflicts that stable relationships and identities ensue. A person grows and matures by working through conflict." [24] 

 

Deny people - particularly young people - the chance to express their anger and release their rage and it's little wonder they end up cutting their arms, for example. 

 

For such an act "quickly releases accumulated destructive tension" [24] - not to mention endorphins - so there's undoubtedly a pleasurable aspect involved (an aspect often overlooked or downplayed by those who are worried that by admitting such they might make self-harm seem attractive).     

   

I think where Byung-Chul Han gets more interesting, is when he attempts to relate self-harm first to the taking of selfies and then, perhaps more controversially, to the practice of suicide bombing ...

 

 

II.  

 

Some readers might recall that I wrote a post on selfies and the rise of the look generation way back in October 2013 [click here], in which I argued against those commentators who greet every development to do with technology, sex, and the play of images with moral hysteria. 

 

And I still have no wish to add my voice to those that suggest the selfie is evidence of either the empty narcissism of today's youth, or a sign that they have been pornified and suffer from low self-esteem - all of which puts me at odds with Byung-Chul Han, who writes:

 

"The addiction to selfies also has little to do with self-love. It is nothing other than the idle motion of the lonely subject. Faced with one's inner emptiness, one vainly attempts to produce oneself. The emptiness merely reproduces itself. Selfies are the self in empty forms; selfie addiction heightens the feeling of emptiness. It results not from self-love, but from narcissistic self-reference. Selfies are pretty, smooth surfaces of an empty, insecure self. To escape this torturous emptiness today, one reaches either for the razorblade or the smarthphone. Selfies are smooth surfaces that hide the empty self for a short while. But if one turns them over one discovers their other side, covered in wounds and bleeding. Wounds are the flipsides of selfies." [24-5]

      

Apart from not sharing Han's horror of the selfie, a further problem I have with this is that, as a sex pistol, I find inner emptiness aesthetically pleasing rather than torturous and vacancy simply isn't something I care about. 

 

Many young punks - including most famously Sid Vicious - engaged in self-harm as an act of provocation; they stuck safety pins through their lips and burnt their arms with cigarettes to outrage and signal their nonconformity, not because they wished to deal with negative emotions, communicate distress, or cry out for love. It also facilitated bonding with other like-minded individuals (i.e. enforced group identity).   

 

Anyhoo, returning to Han's text, he now asks a series of questions:

"Could suicide attacks be perverse attempts to feel oneself, to restore a destroyed self-esteem, to bomb or shoot away the burden of emptiness? Could one compare the psychology of terror to that of the selfie and self-harm, which also act against the empty ego? Might terrorists have the same psychological profile as the adolescents profile as the adolescents who harm themselves, who turn their aggression towards themselves?" [25]

 

I suppose they could; I suppose they might. But I don't think so. But, again, let's allow Han to speak for himself (starting with a dubious gender claim):

 

"Unlike girls, boys are known to direct their aggression outwards, against others. The suicide attack would then be a paradoxical act in which auto-aggression and aggression towards others, self-production and self-destruction, become one: a higher-order aggression that is simultaneously imagined as the ultimate selfie. The push of the button that sets off the bomb is like the push of the camera button. Terrorists inhabit the imaginary because reality [...] denies them any gratification. Thus they invoke God as an imaginary gratifying authority, and can also be sure that their photograph will be all over the media like a form of selfie directly after the deed. The terrorist is a narcissist with an explosive belt that makes those who wear it especially authentic." [25-6]  

 

Again, I find this problematic in parts, but that's an important last line that reminds one not only of the need to curb enthusiasm, but be wary also of those who pride themselves on their authenticity and the truthfulness of their values.   

 

  

* Byung-Chul Han, The Expulsion of the Other, trans. Wieland Hoban, (Polity Press, 2018), p. 19. Future page references to this work will be given directly in the post.