[xmca] Bobath method

I have spent a lot of time recently watching my partner Vonney receiving
physiotherapy treatment following her stroke.

I noticed that the physios used a Vygotskyist approach, in this respect. If
for example, if Vonney was doing facilitated walking, and her left hip was
lazily trailing and needed to be activated and moved forward, instead of
pushing it forward from the back, which would be the common sense thing to
do, they would lightly touch her on the front. In my interpretation, this
touch creates a "psychological tool" in drawing Vonney's attention to the
part of her body which needs to be activated and she naturally responds in
that way and reacts against the light push.

Yesterday I Googled the name of the method the physios used, "Bobath", and
found in the opening paragraph of the definition of this method the following:

                    " the client's potential, which was considered to be
that task or those
                     activities which could be performed by the person with
a little help,
                     and therefore possible for that person to achieve
independently where possible. "

This is a straightforward definition of out beloved ZPD.

Is this a case of "great minds think alike" or is there an historical
connection between CHAT and Bobath?

Andy

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Received on Tue Jul 31 16:24 PDT 2007