The structures of everyday life and occupational therapy: tensioning limits and possibilities in/of the professional practice

Abstract

This essay aims to reflect on the professional practice of occupational therapists taking as a theoretical reference the conception of everyday life by Agnes Heller. In occupational therapy, the discussion about everyday life and everyday life reveals an emphasis on its use as a key to reading and intervention to think about the lives of people, groups or populations that are recipients of professional actions; thus, the focus has always been the daily life of the other. We propose, in this article, a reflexive shift and we problematize the daily life of the professional themself, understanding that the limits and possibilities in/of work are tensioned in the space of everyday life in which professional practice takes place and is crossed by the structures of everyday life. We discuss daily life itself as a locus of resistance to alienation and the possibility of temporary suspensions of daily life through critical work, capable of articulating the technical, ethical and political dimensions of professional practice, of moving between the individual and collective spheres in reading and intervention on professional demands, to overcome the theory and practice dichotomy and, thus, reaffirm the commitment to the transformation of society, in which struggles for redistribution and recognition produce justice and social participation.