Inclusion: Environmental Efforts to Prevent Maladjustment in the Service of Human Growth

Across all types of life-course transitions, the success or failure of the adjustment process is mutually shaped by both the person and the environment (e.g., the other person). However, frequently researchers, practitioners, and laypersons focus mainly on the person (“the newcomer”). The emerging movement toward social inclusion—that is, the call to comprehensively support the adjustment of “the others,” in spite of them being ethnically, intellectually, or physically different from the majority of the given community members—represents the opposite approach, as it highlights the society role in prevention of maladjustment. Based on humanistic values and social justice, this movement pursues the changes in the environment readiness to open itself to all people. Lessons from this movement are much related to the understanding of many transitional episodes.