INTERSECTIONS OF AGGRESSIVITY IN ADOLESCENCE:

A systematic review under the psychoanalytic perspective

Abstract

The aim of the present study was to identify recent research on aggressive impulses in adolescents, and to understand the conceptual variabilities regarding aggressiveness. This was a Systematic Review of literature based on the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and MetaAnalyses (PRISMA) guidelines. The databases consulted were: VHL, PEPSIC, APA PsycNet PsycArticles, PubMed, SCOPUS (Elsevier) and SciELO. The identified publications were written in the following languages: Portuguese, English, Spanish and French.  The selection of materials took place in January 2023, using the CAFe-CAPES platform for databases with restricted access. The terms used were “agressividade”, “agressão” “aggression”, “aggressiveness”, “adolescência”, “adolescent”, “adolescence”, “psicanálise” and “psychoanalysis”. The timespan was equivalent to the period from 2012 to 2022. Among the 16 syntaxes used in the 5 selected databases, as well as the possible variety of languages ??and the long timespan, it is evident that production on this subject was considered scarce. Diverging from the reality of adolescents, which is conflicting and presents aggressiveness. In total, 84 articles were identified, but 45 duplicates were eliminated, leaving 39 publications. After reading the titles and abstracts, 21 articles were excluded. Then, after thorough reading, 9 articles were selected for qualitative analysis. Generally, the studies identified were theoretical and each of them followed a psychoanalytic author of reference, the most evident being Winnicott, Lacan and Freud. Furthermore, the themes generally associated aggressiveness with contexts of violence and delinquency.

Keywords: Aggressiveness; Adolescence; Psychoanalysis; Systematic Review.