Thanks guys.
She was doing some of this stuff from the age of about nine, when she was removing eyebrows and eyelashes and chewing her fingernails right down. Actually she's chewed fingernails since she had teeth.
Her school teacher at the time said she was lacking in imagination - the child psychologist we went to said she had an incredible imagination! I knew that.
She left her eyes alone once she went to high school (13 years old here in NZ) and for about a year she settled down. Then the teenage peer influence kicked in, she started smoking (at school), lost her virginity (at school) and started drinking. Most of this we didn't know until later.
Somewhere around 15 she started the knife stuff, when things went wrong. At one stage she was chasing me with a knife and the police had to call.
More sessions with an 'expert' but I didn't feel they sorted any real problems. We had some nice chats and she admitted she enjoyed tormenting me but she was also tormenting herself at the same time.
She blamed school and one teacher as well as general bullying but all the other kids were coping the same stuff.
Again, things settled and when she left school she seemed to mature. I thought she was going to grow up and turn into a normal adult - well, slightly wild teenager but so are all the others around here.
She tried flatting, got pregnant, had an abortion, came home, went flatting again, got pregnant again, came home again and we had a baby. She tried flatting with the baby but that was a disaster and they had to be rescued. During this time she seemed to be coping quite well (with lots of help from us) but she gradually drifted back to staying in bed, listening to loud heavy metal music, dressing like Marilyn Manson and yelling at the baby.
Just over a month back she snapped, she decided she and the baby shouldn't live and she started trying to hurt us as well.   
She spent 3 weeks in the psych ward and then they let her shift into a flat (but she's not allowed to have the baby).
She came home on Saturday to write her CV and was looking for a job. She was doing better than she had done for months.
Then something upset her and she started the cutting again, which I hadn't seen for several years.
She actually said she inflicted physical pain to cover the emotional pain. This was the reaction she had in her teens and it's been suggested that, given her track record, she will probably revert to this behaviour again in the future.
So I'm now being Mum to a delightful little girl, when I had been looking forward to retirement. Grandad's great with her too so we'll cope.
Robyn