"There's no load I can't hold
The road's so rough this I know
I'll be there when the light comes in
Just tell 'em we're survivors"-Tom Cochrane
The discussion rages on the Facebook page, on several different threads simultaneously.
One discussion that is from oh so earlier in the week and is nearly buried, is one around Todd Hargrove's blogpost, More Deepities: Does Intention have Power?
People involved in manual therapy will have noticed that quite a few streams of it are almost religious in their fervor. The term "deepity" came my way from a lecture by Daniel Dennett, called the Evolution of Confusion, a great watch at about an hour long. Out of that lecture came "deepity"(see clip about 3 minutes long, an extract). Todd explains that a "deepity" is a "somewhat ambiguous statement that precariously balances between two possible meanings. One potential meaning is true but trivially obvious, while the other would be earth shatteringly profound if true, but is in fact false."
Manual therapy is full of these deepity things. Which is kind of Todd's point in writing his blog posts - he's trying to deconstruct belief-based nonsense (I think) to see if there is anything meaningful (actually solid enough to believe) in manual therapy conceptualization. Todd's posts on deepities:
1. Is the “Mind Body Connection” New Agey or Scientific?
2. More Deepities: What is “Energy Work”?
3. More Deepities: Does Intention have Power?
After I linked his latest blogpost to the Facebook page some puzzlement arose: What was truth? People with materialistic viewpoints think they know and that people who don't (have materialistic viewpoints) are wrong and stupid. It's all philosophical/debatable. The poster did not want to discuss her implication that not buying into ideas of "chi" etc was an ethnocentrist attitude and withdrew her post before it could be challenged. A quantum entangler arrived and discussed actions at a distance, which didn't really move the conversation along much.. Finally the idea emerged that "intention" might mean applying mental faculties to manual movement of hands in treatment. It prompted me to write this: "
"The discussion is not about the verb "to intend" - rather the discussion is about the noun, or construal, named "intention" - which as a noun (i.e., reification) can refer to whatever mental construal happens to be drifting through somebody's head. The argument is "some construals are more science-based (i.e., more objective, more reality-based, biologically-congruent) than others." The project is to slowly wean one's own mind off mental junk food onto ideas that are healthier. The goal is to save manual therapy from sloppy thinking and therefore, oblivion."
On another thread, in a post which I can no longer seem to find (dang you Facebook..) I posted a link to Manual therapy models: Operator or Interactor. It was noticed by a poster that the definition I proposed for interactor models of manual therapy included the word "intended". And it does:
Interactor model: A physical therapy handling model which consists of therapist and patient, minus or with deliberately minimized objectification or reification; both parties choose to directly deal with patient pain and nervous system function, in a process intended to be therapeutic.
I pointed out that the word "intended" appears in my definitions of operator models as well:
Operator model
A physical therapy handling model which consists of therapist and patient, plus some pareidolic, reified objectification chosen by the therapist and implicitly agreed to by the patient, intended to be therapeutic.
A physical therapy handling model which consists of therapist and student, plus some pareidolic, reified objectification chosen by the teacher and implicitly adopted by the student, intended to be therapeutic.
There is no escape from intending or intention. There is only a choice about what set of ideas one moves or "intends" from. Moving strictly from a fixed set of ideas while in contact with another human being within a manual therapy context will not allow interaction. Interacting with another human being within a manual therapy context, and having the interaction become the focus, leads to a much different kind of "intending", more interesting process, and hopefully a greater sense of having attained and retained locus of control by the patient. The definition I propose for manual therapy itself, models aside, is:
Proposed definition for Manual Therapy:Something like this might remove us from the messy sphere of arguing over what kind of model is better than anyone else's favorite model and how one model is better than another because it's more spiritual and less materialistic, more quantum entanglementle and less materialistic, more energy and less physical, more ethereal and less biological.
A legally contracted, paid interaction, consisting of physical and verbal therapeutic contact, between a person trained and licensed to perform physical treatment to assist movement and/or relieve pain and a patient seeking such paid service.
I'll probably spend a bit more time delineating the argument (some construals are more science-based [i.e., more objective, more reality-based, biologically-congruent] than others), the project (slowly wean minds off mental junk food onto ideas that are healthier [or at least more neuroscience-based]), and the goal (save manual therapy from sloppy thinking and therefore, oblivion), in future posts. It's good to have all three, clearly in one's mind, no? That, and only that, is my tripartite "intention" in most anything I write, pretty much. And it applies to me as much as anyone else.
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