Psychotherapy and Applied Psychology
May 12, 2026 · 1 hr 7 min · 18 segments
Send us Fan Mail Revisit our conversation with Dr. David Klonsky, Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of British Columbia…
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And I remember the first time I, I, uh, I learned about, um, NSSI, non-suicidal self-injury, in undergraduate.
Just, just finding it inherently interesting because it just sort of goes against, you know, if you don't have experience with it, it goes against your intuitive sense of how people work.
You know, we want to avoid pain, so why do some people on, on some occasions, you know, self-inflict pain and injury? Um, and it registered, but I, I didn't really do anything with it.
And then in grad school, uh, in one of my early clinical practica, I was-- I encountered someone with schizophrenia diagnosis in a hospital but who also had a self-injury history.
And at the time, DSM-IV said self-injury is borderline personality disorder.
So I asked my clinical supervisor, like, "Huh, how often does someone without borderline personality disorder have self, have self-injury?" And they said, "It's a good question.
I don't know." And then I said, "Well, does everyone who self-injures, like, have a diagnosis, or are there some people who are just kind of, you know, reasonably adaptive, functioning well who also self-injure?" And he said, "I don't know." And I just found, I, I found the behavior inherently interesting.
I think I was, I was drawn to anything in human nature that seemed like it didn't make sense because it should make sense.
Um, I was struck by how little people seem to know about it, even people who are experts.
I was struck by the obvious disjoint between the official classification of self-injury in the diagnostic manual and just how it manifested.
And on the sort of more, um, emotional side of it, you know, I definitely, you know...
Most people, I'm guessing, have various kinds of distress that are hard for them.
For, for me, it was, uh, mainly anxiety and sort of a, a sense of socially feeling like I, I, I knew the, the social rules, and that was a real struggle.
And so just my interest in psychology in general was just, like, wanting to understand this better.
[chuckles] Like, understand people better, understand the human condition better.
And a lot of times when you're studying things like personality disorder, which is where I started out in grad school, there's a sense of, like, you don't know for sure if you're studying something real.
You're sort of asking a bunch of questions that are mapping on theoretically to a latent construct, but our definitions of these constructs change.
And I remember the first time I, I, uh, I learned about, um, NSSI, non-suicidal self-injury, in undergraduate.
Just, just finding it inherently interesting because it just sort of goes against, you know, if you don't have experience with it, it goes against your intuitive sense of how people work.
You know, we want to avoid pain, so why do some people on, on some occasions, you know, self-inflict pain and injury? Um, and it registered, but I, I didn't really do anything with it.
And then in grad school, uh, in one of my early clinical practica, I was-- I encountered someone with schizophrenia diagnosis in a hospital but who also had a self-injury history.
And at the time, DSM-IV said self-injury is borderline personality disorder.
So I asked my clinical supervisor, like, "Huh, how often does someone without borderline personality disorder have self, have self-injury?" And they said, "It's a good question.
I don't know." And then I said, "Well, does everyone who self-injures, like, have a diagnosis, or are there some people who are just kind of, you know, reasonably adaptive, functioning well who also self-injure?" And he said, "I don't know." And I just found, I, I found the behavior inherently interesting.
I think I was, I was drawn to anything in human nature that seemed like it didn't make sense because it should make sense.
Um, I was struck by how little people seem to know about it, even people who are experts.
I was struck by the obvious disjoint between the official classification of self-injury in the diagnostic manual and just how it manifested.
And on the sort of more, um, emotional side of it, you know, I definitely, you know...
Most people, I'm guessing, have various kinds of distress that are hard for them.
For, for me, it was, uh, mainly anxiety and sort of a, a sense of socially feeling like I, I, I knew the, the social rules, and that was a real struggle.
And so just my interest in psychology in general was just, like, wanting to understand this better.
[chuckles] Like, understand people better, understand the human condition better.
And a lot of times when you're studying things like personality disorder, which is where I started out in grad school, there's a sense of, like, you don't know for sure if you're studying something real.
You're sort of asking a bunch of questions that are mapping on theoretically to a latent construct, but our definitions of these constructs change.
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