Deliberate injuries are deeply disturbing, much more than risky behaviors, which nonetheless pose the not inconsiderable hypothesis of dying. Conversely, a person who makes marks is far from putting his existence in danger. But deliberate bodily injury, or self-harm, impacts the spirit because it bears witness to a series of unbearable transgressions for our Western societies. This book by David Le Breton, one of the most prominent anthropologists of the last decades, offers us a way to rethink self-harm beyond the profane or horrifying. Le Breton seeks to understand the multiple interpretations that are tied around these acts, ranging from the criminal to the sacred. If making the blood flow is another prohibition that is transgressed, since for many of our contemporaries its mere sight causes fainting or terror, likewise cutting is a symbolic game with death because it imitates death itself, the game with the pain, blood and mutilation.