ABSTRACT
When I started working on this chapter, I was attending a workshop in the Caribbean aimed at increasing the capacity of psychologists and psychology organizations to utilize culture-appropriate scientific standards of the discipline and thereby to meet the needs of the general population more closely. I was impressed by the variety of cultural and ethnic backgrounds, by the pressing challenges of precarious economies and migration waves presented, and by the enthusiasm of the participants. It was obvious that young people made up a huge portion of the population in the islands of the Caribbean, affected by all the problems of globalization in this part of the world. Research and teaching on adolescence in the region, however, is in its very beginnings, and the challenge is to adjust knowledge from Western countries to fit local circumstances and regional opportunities. This scenario reminded me of my own complex pathway to psychology as a field of academic training, and from there to my place in today's developmental science.
