ABSTRACT
It is an age group, especially where narcissism is concerned, that needs to be accorded its own particularity of reference and detail in order properly to trace and understand how the "classic" narcissistic mechanisms, whether thought to be primary or defensive, may, in any one case, be being deployed and exhibited to the detriment of the personality. And where, by contrast, what looks like the pure culture of narcissistic splitting and projection is actually a form of exploration, of temporizing, and of discovery—and thus much more in the service of development than it may appear to be. Freud's notion of the "narcissism of small differences" is relevant. Nowhere is the clannish, or tribal, imperative to establish a sense of cohering identity in the face of intolerable uncertainties and fears of being left out more evident than in the rivalry, even enmity that can be stirred up among and between adolescent groupings.
