Dr. Graham Rowles - 2007Place in Occupational Science: A Life Course Perspective on the Role of Environmental Context in the Quest for Meaning Graham Rowles, PhD
The ultimate focus of each human life is a quest for meaning. In this presentation, building upon and supplementing the perspective of Victor Frankl (1945), I suggest that this quest involves four overlapping domains: achieving a sense of worth through occupation,experiencing fulfillment through relationship, exercising the ability to choose one’s course of action, and developing an understanding and acceptance of one’s place in the cosmos. At different stages of life, each of these domains has different manifestations and assumes different levels of ascendency and priority. Each domain has a place in occupational science. The trajectory of the quest for meaning is shaped by personal circumstances and by context—the places in which the individual lives out his or her life. Adopting a life course perspective, I present an autobiographical case study analysis of the reciprocal relationship between place and person in the evolution of the four domains of meaning. I suggest that in its ongoing search for an orienting paradigm, the still fledgling discipline of occupational science might usefully focus on the evolvingrapprochement of person and place in the search for meaning as expressed within the four domains. This would not only provide a theoretical core for occupational science and an agenda for empirical research but also would furnish an organizing framework facilitating the translation of theoretical and empirical insights from occupational science into specific strategies for effective occupational therapy intervention—the development of practice strategies that would support and nurture the continuing search for meaning that I suggest remains the core motivation of each person no matter what his or her circumstances might be. |
