The author offers a theory of adolescence based on the necessary subjective revolution introduced by the emergence of the potential for orgasm linked to the biological maturation of puberty. But this is first experienced passively because it is « imposed » on the adolescent by biology. It is in the work of subjective re-appropriation the adolescent is then led to perform that we must place the adolescent’s relationship with death and the different forms that can be produced by the encounter with death. Confronted with the issue of death, the adolescent will mobilize the potential of the act in order to try to differentiate the psychical registers threatened with confusion by the contingencies of this encounter and try to set some limits by falling back on those of the body.