Cognitive-behavioral mechanism of adolescent self-destruction

The paper focuses on the actual problem of self-destructive behavior in the adolescent environment. This behavior hinders a person's self-realization, physical, psychological and social well-being. The driving forces of self-destructive behavior are contradictions of self-consciousness. The author analyzes the contradictory experience of teenagers experiencing their self-destruction and their interaction with this experience. By means of a series of diagnostic studies and statistical procedures, the cognitive behavioral mechanism of self-destructive behavior has been established as a way to resolve contradictions between teenagers' self-understanding of their actions and their self-guidance. The study involved 100 adolescents with self-destructive behavior (experimental group) and 100 adolescents with normative behavior (control group). The cognitive prerequisites for self-destruction in adolescents have been proved: lack of formation of conceptual connections with themselves, low level of conceptual thinking, and the tendency to slow learning, low indicators of intelligence and general culture. The semantic contradictions of the experience of self-destruction in an experimental group of teenagers and non-constructive dynamics of their resolution, directed to the implementation of control of one type of self-destruction through another, are established. The obtained results direct the psycho-correctional work to achieve consistency of self-consciousness of adolescents with self-destruction.