Introduction

Abstract

This book is intended to make a beginning in carving out some critical passages in a woman’s life—passages that involve both body and psyche. Though there has been recent literature on these developmental stages, they are typically presented as unitary, discrete phenomena, with a focus on the psychological or the physiological. Here we offer a perspective, a life continuum, and a backdrop against which we can measure and understand these transitions as thematically related—as cyclical, interconnected, and interdependent.