ABSTRACT
In a sense, the whole of human life is one long transition. It is about the differently weighted and freighted developmental journeys across the years: pre-birth to birth; infancy to latency; latency to adolescence; adolescence to adult; adult to old age; and the final transition to death itself. Puberty is, perhaps, the most momentous of all the many momentous changes occurring in the course of the life cycle. For during this transition, there are greater and more rapid physiological, endocrinological, and neurological changes occurring than at any other stage of life except in the womb. Although versions of the pressures and complications that often erupt in early adolescence may have been rumbling for some years, their stark and extreme expression will usually begin with the transition that we are now addressing, puberty, and often again, later, towards the end of school life.
