Pleasure,Throwing Breaches,and Embodied Metaphors: Tracing Transformations-in-Participation for a Child with Autism to a Sensory Integration—Based Therapy Session

Abstract

In occupational therapy practice, the rich interweaving of procedural and narrative reasoning results in healing transformations. However, a lack of research focus on transformational processes perpetuates a focus on observable and measurable behaviors. In line with the movement toward evidence-based implementation research, this article focuses on a case study drawn from an ethnography of therapist—child—family interactions in a sensory integration—based clinic to provide a thick description of the moments leading up to and following changes in bodily and social engagement for a child with autism. Using theoretical resources on acted narratives and aesthetics, this article provides a developing method and language to show how an occupational therapist and a child with autism throw breaches to jointly create embodied metaphors of what matters to the child in his or her everyday life. A microanalysis of therapist—child bodily and sensing interactions also reveals how narrative and procedural reasoning converge in moments of pleasure that ultimately lead to outcomes in participation outside the clinic and confound characterizations of autistic aloneness. Implications for research on sensory integration approaches in general and social interventions for children with autism are discussed.