Trauma-inspired tattoos: transforming personal narratives of suffering into public narratives of coping

https://doi.org/10.1080/01639625.2020.1738641

Commentary

This study will investigate the psychological impact of tattooing one's body.

It has been said that many trauma survivors cope with ongoing invisible wounds by getting tattoos on their bodies. This phenomenon includes not only individuals, but also organized and documented projects held in public places.

The topic of body modification through tattooing will benefit from an explosion of academic interest. However, little academic attention has been directed toward examining how the practice of tattooing can be understood as a means of coping with trauma in contemporary cultural contexts.

Utilizing psychological and cultural research perspectives, investigating the meanings attributed to tattoos by trauma survivors, and analyzing the documented personal accounts of tattooed survivors from different countries, it was illustrated that tattoos appear to be both a personal way of coping with trauma and a cultural practice of meaning making.

Meanings attributed to trauma survivors include recognizing, witnessing, and exposing trauma for the meaning, connection, control, and transformation of the tattoo. The process of making meaning appears to be ongoing and dynamic, shaped by psychological responses, social interactions, and cultural narratives.

In some cultures, these practices seem to work, but in Japan, where I reside, they are perceived as anti-social symbols rather than art, so I suspect that different people will have different results.