F. P. E. van Hest: Project-education as a therapeutic method
Occupational therapy is still frequently used as a method of treatment in psychiatric hospitals. Criticism on occupational therapy has been recently increasing, also as a result of the more general social criticism of society on psychiatric hospitals. The criticisms aim at the rational 'complex', which takes efficiency and productivity as a standard, ignoring individual and social values.
Especially in education, which also knows the rational 'complex', we are trying to find a way out to reorganize contents and organisation of education; in particular the individual and social value should be reestablished.
One of the results is project-education.
The characteristics of a project are, for example:
- integration of psychological functions versus specialisation,
- marking stages in the course of time, versus unstructured time,
- self-government versus imposed guidance,
- game qualities.
These characteristics make the project method an extremely suitable therapeutic means amidst the other therapies, such as occupational therapy, cultural therapy as well as group psychotherapy.
Although many patients could profit from (self)treatment by means of the project method, it does look as if this method is particularly suitable for that category of people who don't have the will anymore to continue their way of living, and therefore refuse reality by withdrawing autistically, in the direction of negation or of their symptoms.
For these people, working in projects may also be a re-discovery of their own ability to give sense to life.