The concerns that today’s adolescents have about ecology is investigated in light of contemporary philosophical and sociological thinking about man’s dependence on the environment. Though denied by modern society, this is emphasized by psychoanalysis. It can also be understood at an intra-psychic level through the debt owed to one’s forbears and the guilt that has been handed down. Ecological activism could enable adolescents to reestablish bonds that have been interrupted, as part of a true “return to origins” from them.

Adolescence, 2021, 39, 1, 95-109.