Self-flagellatory

In this sense, the currently fashionable self-flagellatory school of history is, at the very least, as arrogant and self-centered as the more traditional kind of self-serving history.

There is often a muted mea culpa in these semi-autobiographical musings, a self-flagellatory tone that immediately relieves the reader of any suspicions of romanticism or nostalgia about a bygone age and a lost youth.

I spent a good deal of time on it, wrote her a full response and delivered it back – and then heard nothing more for a few weeks, until I had a self-flagellatory letter from her which concentrated entirely on my negative points rather than my positives.

In war-time, self-sacrifice would be the obvious appropriate antidote to this depression, and some such mechanism is clearly at work in, for example, Vera Brittain's self-flagellatory dedication to her voluntary nursing, ...

Martyrs are desperate to demonstrate their self-flagellatory capabilities in the hope that someone out there actually cares.

There is no point, except perhaps a self-flagellatory, religious one, in self-denial, and in a consumer culture, even modest consumption is an almost impossible stance.