Auto-Enucleation of the Eye: A Study of Self-Mutilation

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Abstract
A young man suffering from an acute catatonic schizophrenic illness enucleated his right eye with his fingers, and when an attempt to remove his remaining eye was foiled, made diverse other self-mutilatory attempts. The patient was passive, shy and unable to make object-relations. He had a traumatic childhood, suffered from the lack of a satisfactory father relationship, and had an abnormally intense relationship with his mother. As a result of the schizophrenic disintegrative process, incestuous drives and behavior were released towards his mother and with further regression the self- mutilatory phenomena occurred. The psychodynamic significance of the self-mutilation is discussed as representing self-punishment for, and an attempt at freeing himself from, strong incestuous and hostile, destructive impulses towards his mother, by whom he felt rejected. The destructive urge which he felt towards her was turned against himself and thus indirectly against the mother as an introjected ambivalently cathected object. The literature relating to auto-enucleation of the eye is reviewed and the psychodynamics of the phenomenon and of self-mutilation in general is discussed.

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