Deck 33: Cyber Communities of Self-Injury

Question 1

Adler and Adler point out that some deviants organize and commit their acts as loners. All of the following examples are mentioned EXCEPT

A) anorectics and bulimics.
B) rapists.
C) self-injurers.
D) shoplifters.

Answer 1

shoplifters.

Question 2

Adler-Adler found that people become involved in self-injury for the following reasons:

A) bipolar disorder, alienation, and family problems.
B) depression, alienation, and rebellion.
C) personality disorders, hidden drug addiction, rebellion.
D) rejection from peers, depression, low self-esteem.

Answer 2

depression, alienation, and rebellion.

Question 3

Self-injury as described by Adler-Adler provided its participants with

A) a form of comfort that assisted them during a stressful period of their lives.
B) a form of self-punishment due to guilt over personal inadequacy and failure.
C) a substitution for the love that was missing in their lives.
D) many different results depending upon the particular person.

Answer 3

a form of comfort that assisted them during a stressful period of their lives.

Question 4

Self-injury as described by Adler-Adler in their study was typically

A) impersonal and public, most subjects studied liked having audience for infliction of pain to themselves.
B) impersonal, in general they remembered nothing about deviance after fact due to a state of near auto-hypnosis.
C) neither personal nor impersonal, depending on the type of self-injury: cutters felt very personal while burners did not.
D) personal and private, not something to be shared with others, needed focus of being alone while engaging in such deviance.

Question 5

When coping with the practical problems connected with their deviance, self-injurers

A) lacked a family support group but instead relied upon close, sympathetic friends to help support their deviance.
B) lacked financial resources to get necessary medical and counseling services to help them quit.
C) lacked the social support of a deviant subculture; others who found out tried to stop, not aid them.
D) relied upon a deviant subculture to help provide social support and much needed information for how to cope with others.

Question 6

Adler-Adler conclude that self-injurers have

A) a high degree of organization with extended deviant subculture and extensive social supports including tips for how to injure self and avoid detection, etc.
B) a mid-level degree of organization, exhibit some social interaction with other self-injurers who provide moderate degree of social support.
C) least organized form of deviant association, lack social support and a subculture, feel lonely and have difficulty sustaining deviance over time.
D) the greatest freedom to commit deviance, enjoy total power to hurt self and derive great sense of empowerment and status among peers for their deviance.

Question 7

Describe and explain the social organization of deviance represented by self-injurers as described by Adler-Adler, including: ideology, social isolation and support, practical problems, normative socialization, and possible strain.

Question 8

What seem to be factors that explain why the self-injurers studied by Adler-Adler remain only marginally involved in committing their deviance over a long period of time? Do you think the internet has changed this for self-injurers since the study was conducted as it has other loner types of deviance such as pedophiles? Why or why not? Explain.

Question 9

Discuss why the Adlers categorize self-injurers as loners. What sets loners apart from most other forms of social-communal deviance? Give two additional examples of loner deviance.