著者

前野 竜太郎

出版者

日本医学哲学・倫理学会

雑誌

医学哲学 医学倫理 (ISSN:02896427)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.22, pp.103-112, 2004-10-18 (Released:2018-02-01)

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The purpose of this paper is to show how the nonverbal communication is used by physiotherapists with physically handicapped and serious mental retarded children, during physiotherapeutic interventions. We used interview with physiotherapists, so to speak, real narratives of physiotherapists, who give physiotherapy to these children, because most of children couldn't even communicate. These interviews show the intimate relationship between physiotherapists and handicapped children, by analyzing the data from the interviews with physiotherapists. In the past, only few attempts have been made at this process of study, because we have to need more objective reliability and validity to research physiotherapy. It is difficult for us to study nonverbal communication more objectively, as it were, it isn't in our field. As physiotherapeutic intervention would be so much different from special education for handicapped children, we need more specific research from physiotherapy about them. In this study, we use the existential analysis method defined by Mourice Merleau-Ponty. It is entirely different from logo-therapy. We avoid using the sociological method of analyzing interview data. The findings of this analysis of data show that we have to transcend the wall of specialty and objectivity of physiotherapy; in other words, we need to be involved in an ambiguity, that is, non-perceivable dimension. Then we could live children with physical handicap and serious mental retardation together, in their world and their daily living. In conclusion, caring is the most important art during the physiotherapeutic interventions.