Questions linked to tattoo are frequent from the tattooee or future one.

Here are some answers..

Despite those injunctions tattoo is still present in the populations converted to islam: berber, nubians. those tattoos pre-existed the convertion periode, a cross on the forehead was supposed to call the good powers, palm trees on berber women the godess mother of the nit.

in the other religions

in hindouisme, the sign CIVA is sometime tattooed on the front of some devotee.

in buddhism the siamese and burmese get tattooed on their shoulder blades the wrists of the buddha in meditation as a sign of good luck.

Psychology and psychopathology of the tattooee

Tattoo is obviously a secret process, a psychological line of thought that the tattooee is not conscient all the time. the body will be the victim of this mutilation that reminds ritual surgery of the primitive people during initiation whent they make enter into culture something close to nature. Thats in the skin that the tattoo is engraved placed in between the inside and the outside. the skin is at the same time envelop of the body and of the self.

The person will model it’s image of the body by manipulating it’s own skin. with this action the skin is the object of an important libidinal investment, it welcomes the needle with pain and pleasure. in the act of tattooing their’s the will to materialize the role symbolic frontier that plays the skin. with this “cutaneous prothesis” the tattooee fix a malfunctioning “i-skin”. this trick doubling the cutaneous membrane, reinforce it’s protective value and will guarentee integrity of the self. by writing it’s limits is will give the elusion of a “self” wich is widened: “being feared”, more “viril”. such an introverted libidinal assertion on the body reinforce self-estim but this narcissical action will impoverish the meaning of the gesture in the relationship with the other. getting tattooed is an action which gives a tesional discharge such as drinking for the alcoholic or an atempt to commit suicide. this shows the link between tattooed and psychopath, of the frequency to act quicly, the poverty of the language because the action replace the speech and it’s practical for the tattooee so he doesn’t have to explain it’s motivations. we can note that tattoo is used each time that personal identity is threaten. so when one goes to prison, army, navy or every place where the uniform,

drugs, discipline, humiliation is trying to shade the “self”.

Histology of tattoo

Injection of coloring during tattoo create a reaction to foreign body. the depth of insertion of the pigment depends on the technic used.

Tattoos made by amateurs are often very deep, when detattooing some pigments are found on the hypodermic fat or even on tendon.

The pigments which are insoluble by nature are concentrated around veines they are mainly in the inter-cellular spaces. they are located in the papillar derma. a few hours after the realisation of the tattoo an immune reaction directed by the macrophage (inflamatory reaction) ends by a partial eviction of the coloring via the lymph way. A third of coloring is destroyed by this mecanism in betwen 7 to 15 days.

Complication of tattoo

the fact of creating a cutaneous “break and enter” makes way to the risk to inoculate pathogenes germs. Injection of coloring in the epidermis exposes to a toxical and allergical risks infectious complications are the more frequent:

In 1853 a case of syphilis by inoculation. tha tattoois was syphilitic and contaminated his customers by weting his needles with his saliva. cutanuous tuberculosis were discribed on tattooed regions.

Detattooing the motivations can be the search of a reahbilitation, a past one wants to erase or a new way of life. or even to make a couple or for a child not to ask questions or just not to have marks on the skin anymore