I haven't seen any reading on it either way but I think it's quite a common thought within mental health teams about BPD.
I don't think it's neccessarily about the attention, or at least not directly. So people with BPD aren't sitting at home thinking "I want attention so I will hurt myself to get it". It is usually because somebody with BPD might not have the skills to ask for help or to help themselves in a safe and effective manner. So in that case, they might go to behaviours that they have learnt to get through things in the past.
Quite often I think when treating somebody with BPD it's important to teach the patient new skills to get through a crisis but also ways to ask for help in a non-harming way, so for example setting up a detailed crisis plan.
My experience of this has been in discussion with psychotherapy because it really upset me hearing the common misconception surround BPD and attention seeking. It helped to hear that usually it was because of a lack of understanding in care professionals about why patients behave in a certain way.
Hope this helps. x
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