Cutting up: signifying the unspeakable.

This article uses a feminist framework to explore women's self-injurious behaviour in response to abuse. It deals specifically with 'cutting up' as a response to physical or sexual abuse. The position pursued regards the body as an inscriptive surface that provides an interface between subject/object and explores how women may lack a means by which to signify to others what their experience means to them. The language available to women does not always provide an adequate means of self-expression. This inadequacy of language often leaves women with no option but the use of non-verbal corporeal inscription. It is proposed in this paper that 'cutting up' is a means of establishing a sense of self while perpetuating a sense of the body as a site for abuse. Discursive constructions of femininity and mental illness perpetuate both the abuse and what is being signified by the act of 'cutting up'. It is argued that this framework for understanding self-injurious behaviours will provide the mental health nurse with an approach to nursing interventions that acknowledges the woman's needs, while at the same time offering the opportunity to signify distress in a manner that does not perpetuate the body's role as an object of abuse.