A corrente materialista histórica da terapia ocupacional: estudo das categorias e teorizações marxistas para a profissão

Abstract

The updating of the Occupational Therapy’s critical thinking and method, known as the Historical Materialism Current of Occupational Therapy (CMHTO), arising in Brazil in the 1980s, is necessary for the open debate that we intend to contribute to the critical perspective of Occupational Therapy. Methods: Theoretical study about historical and dialectical materialist discussion in brazilian Occupational Therapy. Objective: To present the fundamental categories of the CMHTO and part of its theorization in the epistemological debate of Occupational Therapy in Brazil. Results: The epistemological scope of Occupational Therapy, and the purpose and form of professional intervention were the central objects of the CMHTO debate from Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels under the categories work, capitalist production, commodity, alienation, hegemony, ideology, class consciousness, praxis and class struggle. The professional role crisis manifested the contradictions of the profession in the face of its inability to respond to the social and health needs of the working class. The historical and dialectical materialist method theorized by the CMHTO, although primary, point to the overcoming the abstraction about human occupation and the functionalist character of occupational therapy practices that sustain the reproduction to the capital. Conclusion: The critical epistemological debate in Occupational Therapy remains open. The reconstruction of brazilian CMHTO answers the call of our combative professional base to the current form of capitalism under the new and known social and health issues of the working class.