By Fr. George W. Rutler, Crisis Magazine - Tattoos go back even longer: there are tattoos on the five thousand year old body of the Ice Man (Oetzi) found frozen in the Alps. Their purposes are unknown, and at least in part were probably a kind of talisman. There is a greater frequency of tattooing among the mentally ill today, but many psychiatrists think that their use by relatively normal people is often a passive-aggressive way of compensating for low self-esteem especially among young adults.