Occupational Therapy: Building Skills or Transforming Selves?

Abstract

This paper addresses the claim that there is increasing disparity between the profession's philosophical beliefs and core concepts and its clinical practice and research. The author of this claim, Mocellin, maintained that occupational therapy's assumptions about occupation are false and have serious consequences for the profession. He proposed that ‘occupation’ be replaced with ‘teaching skills' as the focus of intervention.

To address his criticism and solution, this paper critiques what its author understands to be Mocellin's assumptions about competence and teaching/learning skills and offers reasons why his underlying assumptions of the competence model do not work. These are that the competence model limits therapists' and patients' resources to available skills; it neglects the spiritual elements of humans; it neglects the rich and influential context of the therapeutic situation; and, contrary to Mocellin's assertions, the founders of occupational therapy placed no special value on competence over occupation.

Further, it is proposed that meaning making is the essential nature of human beings and that meaning making through occupation describes a more viable model of the ideal human condition. To support this thesis, a concise definition of occupation is offered and the therapeutic use of occupation, based on this definition, is contrasted with Mocellin's notions of teaching/learning skills.