While working on the index for the book I stumbled over the entry for “cause of self-harm.” I found this category to be extremely difficult to index because the factors that lead up to developing a disorder like anorexia nervosa varied from individual to individual. Essentially there is a linear string of factors that lead to developing self-harm. But since many of these factors are variable for each individual, one cannot simply list these factors and come up with a well-defined universal cause of self-harm.
While one list of causal factors may apply to one individual, a different list is needed to explain why a different individual developed self-harming behaviour. There are as many forms of anorectic expression as there are of artistic expression. However, there are certain universal factors involved in developing self-harming tendencies. First there is a very general genetic factor, but since this factor applies to so many other individuals who never develop self-harm, there can be no genetic cause of self-harm. Besides, the genetic factor cannot explain why self-harming behaviour had suddenly become an epidemic. The next factor involved is the fantasy factor whereby the individual consciously or unconsciously develops a mythological or fairytale fantasy about life.
The next factor involves some form of trauma. This trauma factor can take the form of abuse or it can be something as benign as a rude awaking to the facts of life that dispels the fantasy. In most circumstances the frustration of the fantasy will cause the individual to adopt a more realistic outlook on life. Some creative individuals will become inspired by the conflict between one’s fantasies and harsh reality to develop a Gothic style of attitude and fantasies. While a writer may become inspired to create enchanting Gothic stories, an individual who is vulnerable to developing self-harming behaviour will use her body as a medium to express herself.
The Queen of Wonderland project draws a parallel between these Gothic fantasies and the fantasies that transpire in the psychic background of self-harming individuals in order to paint a picture of self-harm by way of analogies.
Self-harming behaviour cannot be explained in a rational manner because of its paradoxical nature. Although the method that I am using is largely unscientific, science has proved itself to be inadequate and unable to understand self-harming behaviour. Scientific explanations for self-harm are mostly fantasized constructs, a smoke screen to hide the fact that scientists are at a loss to explain self-harming behaviour. Self-harm, like Gothic fantasies, is a dark art form and a psychic reaction against an attempt by scientists to reduce life to some economically useful facts and statistics. Freud made an attempt to explain art by reducing it to fit his theory of infantile sexuality and all it garnered him was being label a cynic.
Meanwhile I have spent more than a month and a half working on the index for the book. I had no idea that it would take so long to put together an index. I was hoping to make a simple index for the book and provide a more comprehensive index on a CD. Unfortunately, it is not possible to create a simple index for a topic with some many variables as self-harm. I found that many of the categories were dealt with on many widely separate pages, and to try to choose which pages were the most relevant would have meant examining each page for each category. While I did this for some entries, it was an impossible task to do it for all entries. This is something that would have taken months to accomplish. So I have created a rather comprehensive index prepared for the book that will take up many pages. The index was not generated by the computer because those kinds of indexes are more or less useless because they index every page a word occurs on but some of these pages say nothing relevant about that category. Each entry in the index that I have created is relevant to the word in question.
My hope of making the book available in November has been frustrated by the amount of time to create the index, and it is going to take more time to finish the project. At this time, I am aiming at making the book available in January.
