Aggression and auto-aggression in the mirror of adolescents’ self-attitude

Context and relevance. A positive self-attitude and high, and stable self-esteem are the most important factors of a teenager's personal development and successful socialization. In this context, aggressive and auto-aggressive manifestations can serve as external markers of intrapsychic problems in the formation of self-awareness in adolescence. Objects: determination of intrapsychic correlates of aggression and auto-aggression in the inner space of a teenager's self-attitude. Hypotheses. 1. The main hypothesis is that aggressive and auto-aggressive behavioral manifestations are reflected in the intrapsychic space of a teenager's personality in problems of self-attitude, in particular in lack of self-confidence and acceptance by the significant others. 2. An additional hypothesis: adolescents with auto-aggressive manifestations do not accept themselves, they are prone to self-blame, and are declined to use self-harm primarily to relieve emotional tension and to restore self-control. Methods and materials. The study involved 44 adolescents living in Moscow (M-age = 14.6, SD = 1.7). Aggression, auto-aggression, and self-attitude were assessed using a battery of standardized questionnaires. Results. Problematic self-attitude is an intrapsychic risk factor for adolescent aggressiveness/auto-aggressiveness, while insufficient self-acceptance and “lack of confidence” are combined with reduced criticality and rigidity in aggressive adolescents, and with internal inconsistency and self-blaming position in auto-aggressive adolescents. Aggressive and auto-aggressive behavior becomes “destructively effective” with social reinforcement, as it helps to reduce internal tension and allows the teenager to regain control of the situation, in particular by controlling the behavior of others. Conclusion. From the standpoint of cultural and historical psychology, self-attitude is an intrapsychic, “transformed” form of the social situation of adolescent development. As an integral formation of self-awareness self-attitude characterizes the position of a personality in relation to itself, and reflects the personal position of a teenager in the system of interpersonal relationships. The solution to the inter-psychic problems of adolescent aggressiveness / auto-aggressiveness lies in the formation of the intrapsychic reflexive subjective position of the developing personality

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