Preliminary Queries into the Anthropology of Suicide and Self-harm

Introduction

A couple months ago I had briefly investigated suicide and self-harm as cultural idioms; what have they meant to different cultures, and how knowledge of these practices has been used. In my addiction to Instagram reels, I had come across Cliffe Knechtle describing the prophets of Baal slicing their arms religiously, as they got the attention of their god through blood. As much as I was intrigued by the real-life followers of Khorne, a tiny barrier called a ‘dissertation’ prevented me from making real progress, so the project died. Whilst I’m unsure if I’ll return someday, some of the initial weirdness I found firmly implanted in my brain. Maybe someone reading with a better attention span will share my morbid fascination with these questions.

What does Suicide Indicate?

The contemporary narrative which appears to dominate people’s ideas about suicide in everyday life, is that suicide is a direct result of the amount of suffering one experiences. Now this certainly is an oversimplification: in psychological literature there are investigations into specific risk factors for suicide, and you see a specific concern with hopelessness in expressions such as “you have so much to live for”. But this notion of suicide as something which ‘happens’ to you is made explicitly evident in the movement from a language of ‘committing suicide’ to ‘dying by suicide’. Suicide is taken as something abnormal, something which requires an explanation, something that will happen if one is under enough stress. In debates around gender transitioning, people use suicide rates as evident of the intense persecution and suffering that transgender people suffer in society - there connection is taken as so direct that one can infer levels of pain from the suicide rate.

Yet one question emerged which destabilised this whole narrative: if suicide is directly related to suffering, why didn’t everyone kill themselves in the past? Why is suicide a modern epidemic when life has gotten substantially better from the brutal harshness which defined almost the entirety of human history? Investigating Biblical depictions of suicide made this question even stranger, because death in many instances is treated casually in relation to the horrific conditions people lived under. Elijah 19:4 calls out for death when “...He came to a broom bush, sat down under it and prayed that he might die. ‘ I have had enough, Lord,’ he said. ‘Take my life; I am no better than my ancestors’”. Elijah carries a sense of familiarity in that shame and guilt are substantial parts of his suicidality. Yet it is simultaneously a very alien account, because it doesn’t come across as dramatic, there isn’t an intense personal conflict. 

This is mirrored in Epictetus Discourses 1.2, where he claims “To hang yourself is not intolerable. When you have the opinion that it is rational, you go hang yourself”. Whilst in typical stoicism fashion Epictetus has intentionally drained out the emotionality from his description, to our modern sentiments it is still shockingly ‘direct’ regardless. (It has just occurred to me there is a great deal which could be investigated into Greek/Roman depictions of suicide with the deaths of both Socretes and Seneca). I think some distinction can be made in that life as an ‘option’ is a modern sentiment, to question whether a life is worth living and being born were things which seem to be almost ‘assumed’ to a significant degree in earlier years. But the extreme transformation, and where cultural depictions are developing; there’s a lot to question and learn there.

Self-harm: External vs Internal Suffering

Yet I think there is a more extreme transformation in self-harming practices and their significance. Leviticus 19.28 commands that the Israelites “Do not cut your bodies for the dead or put tattoo marks on yourselves. I am the Lord”; which I had no idea how to interpret, given it is a passing commandment with little context, and its juxtaposition with tattoo marks is peculiar. Apparently it was written in a context where many of Israel's neighbours made a practice of cutting themselves in mourning, partly in connection to bloodletting as an offering towards the gods. This was fascinating because it is a complete inversion of modern notions of self-harm. For the Old Testament self-harm was a public action undertaken communally, it was intended to be seen, and was inflicted in response to one’s external suffering. Whereas modern self-harm is something shameful and kept intensely secret, predominantly reflecting one's internal emotional pain; in some instances the self-harm is undertaken as a coping mechanism so as to ensure one’s suffering remains private and unseen.

The most confusing association, which fascinates me as I still have no idea whatsoever what the hell to make of it, is between self-harm and the cutting of one’s hair. In Isaiah 16:6 God threatens the Israelites by warning “Both great and small shall die in this land; they shall not be buried, and no one shall lament for them; there shall be no gashing, no shaving of the head for them”; which mirrors an article on aboriginal complicated grief I read which mentioned cutting one’s arms and hair both as expressions of mourning. Which is so interesting because the typical scientific explanation for self-harm is that cutting releases endorphins in response to the physical pain which helps emotionally, and yet such wouldn’t be the case for cutting one’s hair. 

One fascinating aspect was to see how widespread and independent the development of self-harm practices occurred. In my brief search I found examples all over the world and in different cultures. An interesting distinction I found however was in the mesoamerican self-harm, where cultures like the Mayans seemed to prioritise bloodletting over actual harm to the self. Whereas cutting predominated in most cultures, the Mayans prioritised piercing, and of the genitals, tongue, lips, and ears. I would hesitantly theorise that this is a result of differing intent and metaphysical foundations; piercing doesn’t sound a very pleasant or satisfying way to self-harm, I would assume the favouring would relate to some form of blood flow. But it also raises the question of what is self-harm? If it is merely part of bloodletting practice, is it any different from tattooing oneself?