The external threat that nature will disappear seems to reveal another, internal threat of the loss of the object in adolescence. Without the support of the external object feeding the investment of the internal object, the unrepresentable arises, produced by the object within the Ego. The mobilization of underlying processes for preservation, by enabling the reinvestment of the sexual object, leads to the indispensable narcissistic maintenance of a “feeling of existence” in adolescence.

Adolescence, 2021, 39, 1, 151-166.