Making scenes: imaginative practices of a child with autism in a sensory integration-based therapy session.
A tension in medical anthropology, as an interdisciplinary field, exists between those polar territories of the logic--and therefore grammars--of a positivist-scientific stance of biomedicine and a literary-philosophical one used to represent experience. Taking up literary-philosophical and existential perspectives from anthropology proper, I draw on an ethnographic study of a sensory-integration-based clinic to propose that imaginative practices are one arena where such tension can be worked out. Enacted narratives, as a method, reveal how imaginative practices foreground the ways in which desire and hope are integral to healing. Kenneth Burke's (1969 [1945]) theory of dramatism, particularly his scene : act ratio, provides an analytic lens to examine the imaginary play of a singular session between a child with autism and an occupational therapist. Further, an interpretive frame that tacks between the positivist-biomedical and literary-philosophical discourses excavates how making scenes is integral to a healing of belonging and its embodiment.
Park
Melissa
M
University of Los Angeles, California, USA.
D001321:Autistic Disorder / Q000208:ethnology / Q000628:therapy*; D002675:Child, Preschool; D006801:Humans; D019018:Imagery, Psychotherapy / Q000379:methods; D007092:Imagination; D008297:Male; D033262:Narration; D010989:Play Therapy / Q000379:methods*; D012677:Sensation; D013060:Speech