1900-1939: ARTS AND CRAFTS

MOVEMENT AND THE INFLUENCE OF WWI

History of Occupational Therapy

Time line

1900: US Population Increases Progressive era fuels reform Increase of women in the work place

1917: US enters WWI1919: WWI ends (Treaty of Versailles)1920: Women gain the right to vote1929: Great depression

Women’s Movement and Influence

Goal: establish selves outside of domestic sphere

Argument for: Morally superior Naturally nurturing Alturistic

Reform impulses Christian charity

Helping the poor or “the suffering”Gender roles clearly defined within this period

Men: leadership in the public sector Women: Establish institutes

Hull House

Established by Jane Addams and Ellen Gates StarrAll female and secular society for political and professional

training Believed in scientific method for learning about social issues

Goal: Bridge gap between middle-class reformers and the poor Hull-House Provided kindergarten and day care facilities for the

children of working mothers; an employment bureau; an art gallery; libraries; English and citizenship classes; theater, music and art classes. As the complex expanded, Hull-House supported a Labor Museum, the Jane Club for single working girls, meeting places for trade union groups, and many cultural events.

Developed strong political ties with influential men and women in Chicago

Meeting house for supporters of contemporary social movements Chicago Arts and Crafts Society

Anti-Modernism

Reaction to industrialism, emphasis on hand-made products

Equated idle hands with immoral characterLinked to the arts & crafts movement,

appreciation for meaning in simplicity (Transcendentalism)

“This emphasis on the work ethic and on the idea that idleness produces an immoral character appears to have been intimately linked to early occupational therapy philosophy and to the arts-and-crafts movement or anti-modernism” - (Gutman,1995, p.259)

Arts and Crafts Movement

William Morris (1834-1896), Founder William Morris was a poet, an artist, a designer, a

businessman and a socialist reformer.Founded In response to Industrial Revolution

Arts & Crafts movement stated that the Industrial Revolution, with its division of labor and mechanized manufacturing and factory production of household goods, had resulted in unsatisfying work conditions and poor quality products.

“humans, not machines, completed objects; therefore, work was not abstracted from life but had a place at its very core” -Ruskin

Arts & Crafts Reaches America

Quality of design Natural materials Handmade designs Simple in design

Quality of life “handicraft clubs” “arts-and-crafts societies”

Meanwhile in Medicine…

AdvancesShift towards a scientific foundation“Disease was understood in terms of

physiological processes rather than in terms of suffering or personal disorientation; specialists concerned themselves with organs and tissues rather than the whole patient” (Levin, 1987, p. 249)

Alternative Medical Approach

Dr. Herbert J. Hall Work cure

Adolf Meyer, Mary Potter Brooks Meyer, and William Rush Dunton Curative occupation Goal-directed activity

Julia LathropSusan Tracy

Nursing

“These progressive physicians, Meyer, Hall, and Dunton, worked with social caretakers Lathrop and Tracy to link the holistic treatment of the past with the modern, scientific approaches” (Levin, 1987, p. 250)

Sheltered Workshops

Items sold in shopsThree purposes

Employ talented people who could earn a living by making authentic objects

To give spiritual support to craftspeople who pursued crafts as an avocation

To help employ the mentally and physically handicapped

“The early occupational therapy link to the arts-and-crafts movement did not end with the demise of the therapeutic workshop.”

Slagle and Meyer Unite

Belief that life should become as routine as possible

Meyer’s research on the “unbalanced” cycles of schizophrenia

Habit training= practice model Meyers and Slagle when at Henry Phipps Clinic at John Hopkins

Habit Training

Balance of occupational cycles

Habit Formation as a learning process

Sequence of occupational cycles

Habit Training

Roots of Rehabilitation in War

US Army rehabilitation program based on English reconstruction model “Bedside occupation and curative

workshops”Army Division of OrthopedicsBritish colonel Robert Jones’

Orthopedic rehabilitation back in war Society’s social & moral responsibility

Reconstruction Aides

1918: Walter Reed Hospital (DC), Orthopedic Department uses physiotherapists & occupational therapists

“The employment of reconstruction aides [is] inadvisable […] it is not desirable to employ women in this type of work in military hospitals”

Commanding officers begin to call for more

Evolution of reconstruction aides

Requirements established for R.A. position Educational training (medical disabilities,

anatomy, physiology) Demonstrate 3 fields occupation (crafts)

Reasons for pursuing career: Economic necessity Contribute something to society Experienced

ACTIVITIES OF MEANING, PURPOSE

The Fight of Reconstruction Aides

ORTHOPEDISTS

RECONSTRUCTIONAIDES:

Physiotherapists, OTs

VOCATIONAL EDUCATORS

NURSES

After WWI

Medical orientation in OT-curriculums

First occupational therapy program -Milwaukee

Elizabeth Upham

Started 1st OT program at Milwaukee Downer College

Taught Intensive work in crafts Lectures covering medical, psychology, sociology,

economics and theory Hospital practice training

Elizabeth Upham

Believed in moral character improvement through purposeful activity

Established the program to align OT with stronger medical affiliation and offered more structured course work to gain more credibility for the profession

Elizabeth Upham

Suggested a person “who becomes an independent wage-earner adds to the resource of the country, while every one who cannot increases the drain of dependents” (p.259, Gutman, 1995).

Organizations

National Society for promotion of Occupational Therapy or also known as NSPOT.

First meeting in 1917 Only six people attended; George Edward Barton,

Isabel Newton, Eleanor Clark Stagle, William Dunton Jr, Thomas Kinder and Susan Cox Johnson

By 3rd meeting in 1919 300 people attendedChanged name to AOTA in 1921

Academia

First issue of Archives of Occupational Therapy published in 1922 by AOTA

Later became known as American Journal of Occupational Therapy (AJOT)

Federal Industrial Rehabilitation Act

Passed in 1923Mandated hospitals that were caring for

people with industrial injuries or illness to use OT

program goal is to allow disabled individuals to be “restored to useful, remunerative employment and to self-respecting, self-supporting lives” (Clark, 1945, p. 504)

Contributions we see now…

Women’s MovementArts and Crafts MovementMultidisciplinaryHolisticAOTA

Standardization Curriculum

Balance

References

Crark, D. (1945). Industrial hygiene and the expandable federal state vocational rehabilitation program. American Journal of Public Health, 35, 504

Gutman, S.A.(1995). Influence of the U.S. military and occupational therapy reconstruction aides in World War I on the development of occupational therapy. The American Journal of Occupational Therapy, 49 (3), 256-262.

Levine, R. (1987). The influence of the arts-and-crafts movement on the professional status of occupational therapy. The American Journal of Occupational Therapy, 41 (4), 248-254.

Reed, K.L,& Sanderson, S.N. (1999). Concepts of occupational therapy. p.238-241. Philadelphia: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins

Quiroga, V. A. M. (1995). Occupational therapy: the first 30 years 1900-1930. Bethesda, Maryland: American Occupational Therapy Association.