Callous-unemotional traits, borderline personality, and self-injury in gothic subculture

The present study investigates individual characteristics of a sample of young adults from gothic subculture, in terms of personality traits (i.e., borderline personality and callous-unemotional traits), prevalence and functions of non-suicidal selfinjury behaviours (i.e., internal emotion regulation, external emotion regulation, social influence, and sensation seeking). Fifty-one young adults (28 girls and 23 boys, mean age = 26.20, SD = 4.61) were recruited at a gothic meeting in Italy. They completed self-report questionnaires related to self-injury behaviours and self-injury functions, along with measures of borderline personality disorder and callous-unemotional traits. The results indicated that nearly 65% of the participants reported having committed self-injury at least once. Moreover, both bivariate and multivariate analyses indicated that self-injury behaviours were related to borderline personality and internal emotion regulation function. Lastly, association between considered personality traits and self-injury functions were investigated. Overall, results indicated that in gothic subculture self-injury has the function of regulating emotion to maintain the integrity of the Self and is related to the perception of a traumatic reality in which derealization coexists with extreme self-directed aggression.