This article presents a theoretical framework for thinking about seemingly psychotic manifestations in adolescence. Between the archaic and the actual, the paradigm of pubertary psychosis frees itself from hasty references to the risk of schizophrenia and gives new value to the notion of potentiality as a process. Pubertary psychosis turns out to have an eminently borderline character and its symptoms necessitate ways of treatment that cover the spectrum of a work of the negative that is necessary but uncertain.

Adolescence, 2020, 38, 1, 149-165.