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The qualitative study of manifestations of narcissism in projective tests has shown itself to be a pertinent tool in accounting for certain particularities of psychic functioning in a group of neurotic, adolescent patients when compared to a group of borderline patients. Given the profound readjustments of objectal cathexis at the beginning of puberty, adolescence is a period during which narcissistic foundations of the subject are sorely tested. While narcissistic weaknesses are present in the two groups, they differ as to their place and their function in the global psychic economy. Through the study of certain aspects of narcissism – the type of cathexis of limits between inside and out, the quality of underlying objectal introjection – and of their effects on the treatment of object loss problem configurations, we will discuss the characteristics which differentiate these two organisational modes, the neurotic and borderline types.