| There are issues about biology and culture: what is universal and what is relative to time and place in taste. Doing harm to oneself or others is painful and distressing, but being different is not a psychological issue (unless it depresses or goes on to cause harm due to responses). |
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The task now is to look at the picture again. Identify now what is cultural in being different and what is self harm, assuming that the person is not an artist or magician. |
| From these initial encounters further study can include looking at biological causes, behaviour and learning, psychoanalysis and the unconscious, early experiences and personality development and cognitive malfunctions and irrationality approaches to explaining abnormality, with necessarily being aware of the focus and limitations of each explanation. |