Occupational Therapy: Autonomy, Governmentality and Subjectification

Abstract

This paper explores Occupational Therapy (OT) interventions using a dialogical perspective with therapists and people with functional diversity.[1] Framing the dialogue between the discourses that participate in the therapeutic process, the paper reflexively explores the interferences in the forms of subjectivity that the discipline promotes under the governmental umbrella. The research uses ethnographic and narrative material as the basis of its methodology. The material suggests that OT, like other health disciplines, constitutes a governmental mechanism of bodily regulation that produces subjectification through certain procedures: distributing persons in space, regulating their use of time, and perfecting their performance of activities. The reflection allows us to reconsider the construction of the “patient” in OT interventions considering the rights of persons with functional diversity.

Keywords

• Occupational therapy (Thesaurus); subjectification
• governmentality (Author´s Keywords).