Self-Care, Productivity, and Leisure, or Dimensions of Occupational Experience? Rethinking Occupational “Categories”

Abstract

Background. Critics contend that occupational therapy's theories of occupation are culturally specific, class-bound, and ableist, and that the division of all occupations into three simplistic categories of self-care, productivity, and leisure is arbitrary, lacks supportive evidence, and promotes a doctrine of individualism. Purpose. To add to the work of critics who advocate a fundamental rethinking of occupational therapy's conceptualizations of occupation in terms of subjective qualities of experience that address intrinsic needs. Key issues. This paper suggests that if categories of occupation were informed by the ways in which people experience their occupations, these might be labelled as restorative, as ways to connect and contribute, as engagement in doing, and as ways to connect the past and present to a hopeful future. Implications. If occupational therapists enabled diverse clients' perspectives to inform occupational categories, perhaps relationships between occupations and well-being might more easily be identified in theory and addressed in practice.