Key points are not available for this paper at this time.
There is an old medical axiom that seems at times to have been forgotten: If you want to know what is the matter with the patient, ask him. The article by Leibenluft, Gardner, and Cowdry represents a welcome return to the idea of weighing patient phenomenology heavily in the understanding and treatment of illness. All five cases whose self-mutilating episodes are presented in the patients' own words show striking similarities. The approach I use in diagnosis and treatment of such patients is based on an interpersonal model.
Lorna Smith Benjamin (Tue,) studied this question.