Bridging Conflicting Ideologies: The Origins of American and British Occupational Therapy (original) (raw)
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Occupational therapy's oversight: How science veiled our humanity
2023
Background: Occupational therapy's connection to positivist science predates the profession's formal beginning, with important contributing knowledge sources coming from mathematics, physics, psychology, and systems theory. While these sources of objective knowledge provide a rational, defendable position for practice, they can only explain a portion of what it means to exist as an occupational being. Aims/Objectives: This article aims to reveal some of the history of science within occupational therapy and reveal the subjective, ontological nature of doing everyday activities that the profession's preoccupation with positivist science has obscured. Methods: This research used a history of ideas methodology to uncover how occupational therapy perceived people and how practice was conceptualised and conducted between 1800 and 1980s, as depicted in writing of the time. Conclusion: Analysis showed that, through history, people were increasingly categorised and delimited. Practice also became systematically controlled, moving occupational therapy into a theoretical, scientific, and abstract realm. Significance: The emphasis placed on objectivity diminishes the attention given to human ways of practicing, where the subjective experience is central to our thinking.
Creating Occupational Therapy: The Challenges to Defining a Profession
Occupational Therapy In Health Care, 2018
The creation of a new profession in the early 20th century, such as occupational therapy, required a commitment to certain ideas and a willingness to accept certain challenges. This study examines the commitment to the idea of therapeutic and health supporting occupation by the early leaders and proponents of the profession and the challenges they faced in gaining acceptance of occupational therapy as a profession capable of delivering a valued health care service to society. Six challenges are reviewed as they occurred in the history of the profession and as they continue to challenge the profession into the present era.
Pioneering occupational therapy and occupational science: Ideas and practitioners before 1917
Journal of Occupational Science, 2017
The concept of using occupation with patients or clients was well established by the time the founders of the American professional organization met in 1917, but the origins that focus on using occupation as a change agent for individual patient benefit remain unclear. Therefore the questions for this paper are: (1) When did occupation begin to be used as a change agent for individual benefit? (2) Who were the people that first advanced the notion of occupation as a potential positive change agent? and (3) What were their ideas about how occupation could be applied? The answers were found by searching the journal literature using multiple terms, about 25, related to the concept of occupation since the term "occupational therapy" did not appear in print until 1915. Ninety-five articles were located published in North American between 1897 and 1916. Six early practice models were identified by terms used in the authors' publications: institutional occupation, diversional occupation, work cure, habit training, specialized workshops and invalid occupation. The authors of the articles were organized into four professional groups: physicians, other professionals (psychologists, nurses, and artists), occupation workers, and occupational therapy personnel. Selected individuals from each group were reviewed along with a sample of their work. The earliest identified published example among the authors was the occupation of gardening, initiated in 1896 but not published until 1917. The earliest identified article describing the value of occupation was published in 1897.
Evolution of Occupational Therapy Practice: Life History of John White Jr. PhD, OTR/L, FAOTA
2019
Objective: The purpose of the study is to provide current and future generations of occupational therapists a view of the history and how occupational therapy practice has evolved from its inception to current practice through the life history stories of occupational therapists who have held leadership roles at the national level and beyond. It is anticipated that the life history process will be a powerful way to gather this information. Method: The participant was assigned to the project directors through purposive sampling. Two, 60-minute, semi-structured interviews, guided by the Kawa model, were conducted with Dr. White through a video chat application at the University of North Dakota School of Medicine and Health Sciences. The interviews were transcribed verbatim and then broken into codes, categories, themes, and a final assertion. Results: The predominant categories that represented the major elements of his career were Leadership and Involvement, Education and Work Experie...
The End of Occupational Therapy
American Journal of Occupational Therapy, 1998
In this article, I propose that the unique end, or goaL, of occupationaL therapy is to help persons with perftrmance deficits ofany kind make and express meaning through organized human performance, which I caLL occupation. To support this thesis, I show that, too often, philosophers, psy-choLogists, and others who have studied meaning do not see human performance as a cruciaL way ofmaking and expressing meaning. This article chaLLenges the assumption that meaning making is only a cognitive process in which Language is its primary expression and shows that the nature ofhumans is to make meaning through occupation. Furthermore, this article reveaLs why occupationaL therapy shouLd emphasize human performance and its roLe in meaning making. FinaLly, I propose that occupation is properly defined as intentionaL human pClformance organized in number and kind to meet the demands ofse/f maintenance and identity in the ftmiLy and community I justifY this definition and discuss the Likely therapeutic nature ofoccupation and exampLes ofthe end, or goaL, of occupationaL therapy.
Health: An Interdisciplinary Journal for the Social Study of Health, Illness and Medicine
Occupational therapy knowledge emerged in the 19th century as reformist movements responded to the industrialisation of society and capitalist expansion. In the Global North, it was institutionalised by State apparatuses during the First and Second World Wars. Although biomedicine contributed to the rapid expansion and establishment of occupational therapy as a health discipline, its domestication by the biomedical model led to an overly regulated profession that betrays its reformist ideals. Drawing on the work of Deleuze and Guattari, our aim in this article is to deconstruct the biomedicalisation of occupational therapy and demonstrate how resistance to this process is critical for the future of this discipline. The use of arts and crafts in occupational therapy may be conceptualised as a ‘nomad science’ aesthetically resisting the domination of industrialism and medical reductionism. Through the war efforts, a coalition of progressive nurses, social workers, teachers, artisans a...
Occupational Therapy: the emergence of the profession from occupational disease
II INTERNATIONAL SEVEN MULTIDISCIPLINARY CONGRESS
Occupational Therapy (T.O) is a higher-level profession regulated through Decree-Law No. 938/1969 and had its council founded together with physiotherapy in 1975, named the Federal Council for Physiotherapy and Occupational Therapy (COFFITO). This professional category in the health area is focused on the prevention and treatment of subjects who have affective, cognitive, perceptual, and psychomotor alterations, resulting or not from disorders, traumas, or acquired diseases that affect their performance in carrying out their occupations. It is a profession with more than 50 years of existence, and that has extreme relevance in society, which justifies the importance of more dissemination of its objectives and focuses of action.