The Possibilities for a Post-Human Physical Therapy

Abstract

This chapter offers a radically revised concept of therapy. Therapy is a concept that lies at the heart of what it means to be a physiotherapist, so it seems surprising that the profession has never defined what the therapy in its name actually means. In recent years, physiotherapists have been looking for new ways to express an expanded idea of their profession, but these have concentrated on more humanistic forms of practice. Here we take a different, post-human approach, understanding therapy as a universal process common to all entities. We begin by critiquing the paradoxes and inconsistencies evident in physiotherapy’s present understanding of therapy and then contrast this with an approach drawn from the writings of Gilles Deleuze. We conclude that therapy is a much more inclusive and complex phenomenon than the profession has previously understood, and suggest it has the potential to radically transform the physical therapies in the future