The Way We Were: Romantic Assumptions of Pioneering Occupational Therapists in the United Kingdom

摘要

Doing, being and having things are the fundamental components of human life according to Jean-Paul Sartre (1943/1956), a leading 20th century philosopher. Sartre also proposed that people enlarge their sense of self through the things that they have, and reveal something of themselves to others. The purpose of this series of three articles is to come to know how the pioneering occupational therapists of the United Kingdom thought about their practice by observing the things that they had and used, and the ways in which they thought about them, in orderto understand current practice issues. The account that is presented covers a 25-year period between 1938 and 1962. Although post-dating occupational therapy's arrival in the British Isles, those years mark the first quarter century of publication of one of the precursors of the journal now known as the British Journal of Occupational Therapy, which was the main source of data for the study.