Social occupational therapy: formulations by freirian references

This is a critical reflection aimed to discuss the social occupational therapies as a knowledge and practice area, using the Freirian references, focused on three concepts: education as the practice of freedom, dialogue


Introduction
Since its emergence, social occupational therapy has Freire's contributions as one of its references (Malfitano et al., 2014).According to the survey by Gontijo & Santiago (2018), productions in this area are highlighted by citations from this author.
Thus, this essay aimed to discuss social occupational therapy, based on Paulo Freire's theoretical reference, producing a critical articulation.In other words, we intended to develop some Freirean concepts and reflect on their contributions to the epistemic, technical, ethical, and political production of social occupational therapy -his praxis (action-reflection/praxis).
This process starts, first, from a brief biography of Paulo Freire, followed by formulations that locate assumptions of social occupational therapy to then reflect and elaborate proposals based on three concepts of the author: education as a practice of freedom, dialogue, and conscientization, which are woven and designed for the praxis of social occupational therapy.

Paulo Freire
Paulo Reglus Neves Freire was born in Recife, Pernambuco, Northeast Brazil, on September 19, 1921, anddied on May 2, 1997.Throughout his life, he left an intense legacy for education, and several theoretical-critical resources to understand the relationships of oppression and liberation, which constitute the existence of men and women who are in the world, with the world, and with others (Freire, 2000).This world is marked by wickedness, but, according to Freire, taken by the political and ideological possibility of justice, progress, transformation, and liberation (Brandão, 2014;Andreola, 2000).Gadotti (1997) discusses Freire and his commitment to the oppressed, creating possibilities for the transformation of this condition, in the search for revolutionary, problematizing, and dialogical pedagogical movements, in an attempt to not only denounce the world's ills but also to announce forms and possibilities for overcoming it.
Also, Freire and his ideas gave life to several movements for the struggle for popular education in Brazil, such as the Popular Culture Movement (PCM), Popular Culture Center (PCC), Basic Education Movement (BEM) 1 , among others, leading literacy movements of workers in the country, where cultural circles 2 have taken a large proportion.In 1964, Freire took over the Coordination of the National Literacy Program, of the Ministry of Education, a job that was interrupted by the military coup that led him into exile.However, their initiatives and achievements were seeds, even though they needed to be cultivated clandestinely in Brazil under the military dictatorship.Nevertheless, Freire remained formulating, creating, teaching, and debating his conceptions around the world.With the political amnesty of the late 1970s, he returned to Brazil in 1980, with new experiences and strength to (re) create and (re) know the country, "[...] contributing as a teacher, writer, politician and advisor to all of us, originally and outstandingly, for the renewal of national and universal pedagogical thinking" (Nosella, 2008, p. 180).He was always engaged in education as a practice of freedom and conscientization among oppressed/adapted men and women, to become individuals in the world, with the world and with others, for their insertion 3 .

Social occupational therapy and the search for a critical task
Occupational therapy arrived in Brazil in the mid-1950s, in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, first as technical training and then as a profession (Reis & Lopes, 2018).It was a course aimed at health rehabilitation, involving interventions with individuals with physical disabilities, in the context of international cooperation agreements, under the coordination of the United Nations (UN), the International Labor Organization (ILO) and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), since the late 1940s, especially concerned with the demands of capitalist production (Monzeli et al., 2019).Along this process, he also consolidated his participation around the use of work and occupation in the dimension of psychiatric intervention, with individuals with mental disorders, within the scope of total institutions, existing in Brazil since the end of the 19 th century (Soares, 1991).In this way, the professionalization of occupational therapy focused both on the rehabilitation of bodily function/capacity/incapacity and work/occupation/activities as a resource in the psychiatric clinic and on functional/occupational performance.
Such parameters for the actions of the profession historically established as hegemonic are based on processes of health-disease mediation, the knowledge of biomedicalpsychological clinic, a reference that leads to a reductionist perspective when it comes to social problems, leading to its medicalization and/or psychologization (Barros et al., 2007).
The perception of the limits to deal with social problems from the health-disease binomial slowly begins in the 1970s, when occupational therapy begins its insertion in the social area (prison institutions or young people in conflict with the law, children's shelter Education Movement (BEM), of national scope, results, in 1961, of the National Conference of the Bishops of Brazil (NCBB), articulated with actions of the Federal Government, among others.They are movements based on initiatives by educators, politicians, intellectuals, students and other social movements, focusing on the production of an education as a practice of freedom with the popular classes, especially young people and adults, with the objective of to disseminate educational practices linked to the culture of the people, committed to literacy and conscientization (Kreutz, 1979). 2 The culture circle is a strategy formulated by Freire for an educational practice for conscientization.From the dialogue in circles, the objective is that the collaborating individuals problematize the world, unveiling their contradictions and looking for ways to overcome structures of domination, taking the being in the world and with the world, in a process of praxis, humanization and emancipation (Fiori, 1987). 3Freire (2000, 1987) puts the need for individuals not to be only in the world, occupying the place as non-historical beings, but to be with the world and with others, being able to intervene in concrete reality and constitute it historically.Thus, this implies insertion (as beings of ethics, decision, choice, curiosity, transformation -praxis), as opposed to adaptation (as beings who consider reality immutable).and poor teenagers, nursing homes for poor elderly people), facing new demands, in which the perspectives of physical or psychiatric rehabilitation are inadequate and reductionist, giving rise to social occupational therapy (Barros et al., 2002).This area of knowledge and practices is based on two theoretical perspectives: a critical understanding of the social issue in Brazil, that is, the problems related to social inequality that limit the social participation and citizenship of several vulnerable groups, placing social occupational therapy to overcoming the professional role of the social adapter and forged as a social articulator; and positioning for the inadequacy of biomedical, psychological and health-disease knowledge to articulate their performance with individuals and population groups in processes of disruption of social support networks, discussing other theoretical-methodological references, closer to the social human sciences (Lopes & Malfitano, 2016).
Thus, the political and technical role of professionals in the social issues is strongly questioned, highlighting the refusal to reproduce the logic of oppression and inequalities and the defense of another one, which engenders the occupational therapist as a social articulator with a technical-political commitment to subordinate men and women, in favor of the democratization of rights and the exercise of citizenship (Lopes, 2016).Thus, epistemological supports from the social sciences, humanities, education, and social occupational therapy are taken, for a theoretical and practical position in the face of those problems, which involve, dialectically, individual and collective people, and social and cultural contradictions and inequalities in Brazil.In this process, theoretical references support the therapeutic and social occupational praxis (Barros et al., 2002).
Also, social occupational therapy is understood as a perspective, an area of critical production of actions and reflections -task/praxis, which destabilizes the hegemony of technical and scientific occupational therapy (in its reductionist sense, highlighted by what is taken as neutrality politics) (Galheigo, 2009).This point of view contributes to the need to promote occupational therapy, from the moment that an approach based on the social, cultural, and geopolitical needs of Brazil is constituted.Sulear is a term that Paulo Freire uses in Pedagogia da Esperança (Freire, 1992), giving strength to the enunciation of a South perspective, breaking the silence of the colonized and/or peripheral countries in the world order, which imported models under the hegemony of economically central countries, with great Anglo-Saxon predominance, including occupational therapy.
Therefore, we can say that social occupational therapy aims to advertise, starting from the needs and demands of this historic, economic, cultural, and social South, specifically taking Brazil.To paraphrase Freire in Education as a practice of freedom, social occupational therapy based on the emergence of national social problems seeks to forge a professional project, refusing to transplant inadequate and inoperative solutions to problems in the context, viewing it critically.We can conclude that, in an integrated, increased and critical way, this area "[...] gradually gains conscience of its possibilities, as an immediate result of its insertion in its world and the capture of the tasks of its time or the new vision of the old themes" (Freire, 2016, p. 73).
With such parameters, the question that mobilizes us in this production is: how can Freirean references inform on the praxis of social occupational therapy?Therefore, we outline some possible answers to this question with a focus on three concepts, which seem to us to be potent: education as a practice of freedom, dialogue, and conscientization.
We know that Freire's writings do not fix isolated concepts.There is a dialectic in all his formulations, conceptions, denunciations, and announcements (within a category, a diversity of others is announced).However, we understand that the exercise of locating categories is necessary for the unfolding of the theory in the context of social occupational therapy to become more rigorous and be a conceptual reference.However, it is important to say that the search for the categorization of some concepts is more to understand its radicality and never to sectify or reduce its original scope.
2 Education as a Practice of Freedom, Dialogue, and Conscientization: Practices for the Production of the Untested Feasibility Given the complexity of Freire's works, his proposal of education as a practice of freedom4 has been worked on and discussed by several fields of knowledge.This concept is placed as a perspective of a progressive praxis, based on the emancipation of individuals who experience processes of oppression and dehumanization, in contrast to alienated banking education, in the service of market ethics (Freire, 1981).The displacement of this practice based on freedom affirms dialogicity, overcoming the domination and antidialogical perspective of banking educational processes, which have the other as a passive individual of the process.
We understand this concept here conceiving the role of the social occupational therapist as an agent of educational action, in the ethical-political and technical dimension, which can permeate his praxis in different service sectors, such as education, social assistance, justice, among others.Therefore, this action is not restricted to the locus of education at school, since, for Freire, the meaning of education as a practice of freedom permeates all the processes of meeting and doing with the other, where one and the other are active individuals.
The action for freedom is configured as such if it is authentically reflective, constantly looking for the unveiling of reality and the emergence of consciences for a critical understanding of this concrete reality, the questioning of the reality that permeates the individual is central (Freire, 1987).For a better understanding of education as a practice of freedom and its contribution to social occupational therapy, we expose initial key points for a professional action based on education as a practice of freedom: the ethical-political commitment; criticality-problematization; democratization; and technical-scientific rigor.
In the key to the ethical-political commitment, we assumed to overcome the neutrality bias, understanding that the conditions of power that generate social exclusion are the result of social relationships woven and for structural inequality and political options.Thus, the occupational therapist must be vigilant about the directives of their practices, considering the question: their praxis takes place "[...] in favor of what and of whom, against what and against whom [?]" (Freire, 2005, p. 28, emphasized by the authors).His answer is an ethical imperative to a position in a progressive way (or not), assumed as an articulating agent of transformation (or not), imposing responsibility and requiring the inseparability between technical and political action (Basaglia & Ongaro-Basaglia, 1977;Malfitano, 2005).
The criticality-problematization key guides the therapeutic-occupational action that seeks to unveil "[...] the reason for being of the things" (Freire, 1992, p. 51), in a process of interrogating reality, bringing up what is hidden by contradictory and dominant ideologies.The occupational therapist and the individuals to whom he directs his action are agents of this enlightenment based on his knowledge, presupposing the problematization of the individuals and their relationships with the world, strengthening an intentional conscience for the critical reading of social dialectics, both of its macro and microsocial aspects, but, above all, of the possibilities and limitations around the social insertion of the population-target of the intervention, using strategies that favor the development of a critical, restless curiosity (Freire, 1996).
The democratization key permeates action from the moment that the occupational therapist, in a joint praxis, breaks with the hierarchy of powers and knowledge, founded on authoritarianism, and seeks to forge an action based on tolerance and respect for the choice of each individual and of its multiple ways to exist materially and subjectively.However, always exercising the function of challenging the individuals to question their options and conditions, without imposing ways of conceiving life, but showing their technical knowledge about certain aspects of daily life (Freire, 2013(Freire, , 1987)).
The technical-scientific rigor key is established by the need for professionals to exercise their intervention without losing the rigor of their technical and scientific nucleus action, affiliated to the use of strategies, resources, and technologies that must be at the service of this intervention, and competent in their professional acting.It would be contradictory and, in this reference, unsustainable to forge a practice directed towards freedom in a licentious or spontaneous way.
These keys can guide the therapeutic-occupational social action towards freedom, and we exemplify below the construction of Activities, Dynamics, and Projects Workshop5 (Lopes et al., 2014) as spaces that can enable practices for freedom.
According to Lopes et al. (2014, p. 595), "[...] social occupational therapy uses activities as a mediating resource for the work of approaching, monitoring, apprehending demands and strengthening individual and collectives, towards its action".In this sense, the Workshop can enable the intersubjective encounter, articulating the search for an expansion of social recognition of the individual or groups, focusing on their needs at the micro and macro-social level.Also, it is a space for coexistence, experimentation, subjective constitution, meetings, doing together, based on activities, dynamics, and projects that provide a moment to tasks -action and reflection for the individuals' lives, to think about their performance in the world, and to formulate solutions for the dehumanization processes, building life possibilities (Malfitano, 2016).
Under the bias of Freire (1987), that task in the Workshops can be seen as a praxis for freedom, insofar as it becomes, in fact, a space for exchanges and dialogues to engender inventions and (re) create the individuals' daily lives, for "[...] defending autonomy, citizenship, and the right and for the search for new strategies for building and/or strengthening collectives" (Galheigo, 2016, p. 65), limited in their daily experiences and social insertion, assuming this critical, political, democratic space to foster the possibility of change (Freire, 2013).
Education as a practice of freedom "[...] must be understood as a moment, or a process, or a practice in which we encourage people to mobilize or organize to acquire power" (Shor & Freire, 1986, p. 27).Thus, professional practice must also focus on conflict, "the midwife of conscience" (Shor & Freire, 1986, p. 106).The explicitness of individualcollective conflicts is a challenge to be faced for them to formulate cultural, social and relational negotiation movements, guided by the expansion and facilitation of social participation, by projects of the future, by social belonging and, therefore, by strengthening support social networks and access to social goods and rights (Barros et al., 2002;Barros, 2004).That is, confronting conflicts produced in individual and collective social insertions for full citizenship, understanding that the exercise of citizenship takes place from the moment that the individuals are intervening in society, deciding, choosing, evaluating, doing, taking History in their hands, in favor of social justice (Freire, 2001).
In this way, "[...] understanding the occupational therapist as someone qualified to create joint strategies to expand opportunities" (Malfitano, 2016, p. 123), within the recognition of the ontological and historical vocation of Being more of the individuals, we understand that the structure is contradictory and distorting socio-economic and cultural system (market ethics, colonization, oppression) conditions the individuals, but does not determine them, recognizing History as a possibility (Freire, 2013(Freire, , 1996)), placing professional intervention at the service of "democratic invention of our society" (Freire, 2013, p. 54, highlighted by the author).
Education as a practice of freedom is directly linked to the concepts of dialogicity and conscientization, in a dependent manner.The dialogic practice has two essential processes for social occupational therapy: 1.The investment in relationships and the encounter to build the bond: the therapeuticoccupational praxis mediated by doing/thinking/building/formulating/projecting with the individuals implies the "[...] recognition of the other, about otherness" (Barros et al., 2002, p. 200).They are essential movements for the construction of bonds, understood here as a relationship of respect and trust between individuals and social occupational therapists.Respect and trust are bases for the dialogue but they do not happen a priori, they are part of a process that results from being together for the composition of moments of pronunciation and denunciation of the world, intended for transformation (Freire, 1987).Thus, the alterity for the constitution of the bond in a Freirean perspective presupposes dialogue, intersubjective encounter, and intercommunication within a world of communication, in which a conscious body (intended to the world, to reality) talks about reality and mediates the relationship, establishing a dialectic-communicative relationship, in which there are no passive or isolated individuals, but always in the encounter and in saying the word."The thinking individual cannot think alone; it cannot think without the participation of other individuals in the act of thinking about the object.There is no 'I think', but a 'We think'."(Freire, 1983, p. 45).
From this perspective, the social occupational therapist commits to establishing a dialogical relationship, in a deep understanding of the needs and life histories of the other.It is a way to forge a practice based on collaboration (Freire, 1987), which takes place with the understanding of how individuals and collectives live, objectively and subjectively, in a dialogical dimension between the material world and the senses and meanings attributed, lived and also dreamed, in a therapeutic-occupational approach of the culture circle, of the intersubjective encounter.2. Professional action articulated in the territorial, community, and cultural dimension: spaces and daily life (ways of being in the world and like the world; circulation; social relationships and networks in the territories of existence; community relationships; cultural expressions and modes of living) of the individuals need to be understood/apprehended radically.The practice takes place in exchanges to learn about these dynamics and their material and symbolic meanings, in which the occupational therapist [...] exposes his reading of the world to groups [...], learns from them [...].He also learns from the oppressed the ways that are indispensable to his resistance and which are sometimes elitistly spoken as the 'lack of character' of the disinherited (Freire, 2013, p. 107).
Therefore, we must understand the truth of the people, their ways of social insertion that, many times, come out of standards considered as "normality".In this sense, Malfitano (2016, p. 123) shows that professional action must "[...] recognize the multiple forms of integration, including marginal and illegal ones, and mediate the process, almost always conflicting, of access to some social goods and the possibilities of autonomous participation in social life", and in which dialogicity is fundamental.Thus, the professional depends on " [...] the ability to open up to the 'soul' of the culture where the experience took place or is taking place [...].To open to the 'soul' of culture is to let 'get wet', 'soak' the cultural and historical waters of the individuals involved in the experience" (Freire, 2005, p. 110).
This does not mean that there will be a therapeutic-occupational action that accepts everything without question, in a naive trust (Freire, 1987), but in a willingness of the professional to understand, in its context and history, the experiences of the individuals to build together processes for expanding alternatives.The challenge is the negotiation for the joint construction of responses to demands placed by the individuals, in which the social occupational therapist, from his knowledge, engenders and proposes actions, at the same time as the target population, within his knowledge and forms existence also proposes and dialogues about its needs, expectations, knowledge, and desires.Knowledge and mutual respect between the professional and the subject are essential to establish joint projects, in the sharing and exchange of knowledge, with dialogue being the sustaining force of the bond, the trust.
In meetings, in dialogue, mediated by the strategies and resources of social occupational therapy, it is up to the professional "[...] to challenge popular groups so that they perceive, in critical terms, the violence and the profound injustice that characterize their concrete situation.Furthermore, their concrete situation is not the right destination [...], something that cannot be changed" (Freire, 1996, p. 31), in the sense of adding to the knowledge, an conscientization process 6 .Conscientization goes beyond simply becoming aware of its contradictory and limiting reality, conscientization is an extension of that, it requires critical reflection, analysis, and rigorous knowledge of concrete reality, uncovering truths hidden by dominant ideologies.In other words, it is not just the finding, but it reaches the raison d'être (reason to be), which needs to start from popular knowledge but surpass them.With the construction of a rigorous understanding of the status quo, conscientization results in social insertion and participation, some movements show structural constraints, but also offer inputs to formulate ways for coping and transforming (Freire, 2005).
[...] knowing that the material, economic, social and political, cultural and ideological conditions in which we find, usually generate barriers that are difficult to overcome fulfilling our historical task of changing the world, I also know that the obstacles are not eternalized (Freire, 1996, p. 28).
Then, the social occupational therapist takes conscientization as a directive, which must be built together with the other, composing popular knowledge and their technical practice, integrating them into ways of understanding and transforming the world, but going beyond, in search of an epistemological and methodical curiosity (Freire, 2013), for the elaboration of more critical knowledge, which aims that the individuals strengthen their possibilities, their rights, recognize their duties, their potentialities in living multiple lives and daily lives.Freire (1987) puts all this as a process that challenges and provokes the individuals, to glimpse the untested feasibility, emerging within the possibilities of participation and everyday experiences, overcoming the limit situations (barriers or difficulties in accessing social goods, weaknesses in their support networks, impediments in the exercise of autonomy, in daily practice, in significant activities) that need to be overcome from limit acts (in the denial of data as an insurmountable condition).
Thus, as a consequence of objectifying limit situations, we propose transformative praxis (limit acts), which requires negotiation and formulation of strategies, with the potential therapeutic-occupational action to contribute to the constitution of the unprecedented viable, in other words, to achieve what was previously unviable, such as a fair and dignified experience of existence within social and daily dynamics.

Final Considerations
Freirean references are powerful for thinking and carrying out praxis committed to the liberation of subordinate individuals and groups, offering references to understand oppressive relationships and forge possibilities for transformation, and the social occupational therapist can use such concepts in denouncing and announcing a fairer world (with dialogue, freedom, conscientization, overcoming limit situations).Paulo Freire's formulations are provocative for the elaboration of praxis in an enlarged way.However, it is no less rigorous, allowing the understanding of the "[...] movement of the real, of history and life in its context" (Barros et al., 2002, p. 102), essential to guide social occupational therapy in actions committed to overcoming the evil of capitalism, to action, while the second indicating the action itself, the act of make the people aware, subsequent to conscienceaction.However, based on our study of the references, it is clear that conscientization becomes the central concept for both the act/action of make the people aware and the inseparability of conscience and action.make it a less perverse world, using its strategies together with the individuals for social and personal emancipation, focused on humanization.