It is difficult to account from clinical psychology about some kind of generalization. Our praxis is based on individual differences and not on generalizations. But I will try to generalize about the "tattoo" and its piercing cousin.
Many times a gesture, an action, a behavior involves something that has not been said. So what is meant by a tattoo?
In its origin, the tattoo indicated what kind of role that person had in society. The more important lineages were and even came to describe ancestors, place of origin, fighting battles, etc. Then the sailors copied them (1700) when recording the name of their ship, a way to know to which ship belonged a body floating in the sea. Then drawings were made of places where they had been and affections they had left (the name of their beloved, the flag of their homeland, some mission they had adopted, etc.). In the decades of 1950/60 was added the use of concealing the scars of people who injected psychoactive substances.
