“Open Day in the Factory of the Mind”: Janet Frame and the History of Occupational Therapy

Abstract

Janet Frame’s representations of occupational therapy have been neglected in Frame Studies. Frame experienced occupational therapy shortly after it was introduced to New Zealand psychiatric hospitals during the Second World War. Frame witnessed first-hand how this treatment developed in the decade from 1945-1955 in New Zealand. At this time, occupational therapy had lost the important intellectual roots of its founding vision worldwide. This thesis will demonstrate how the history of occupational therapy informs three chosen Frame’s novels: Owls Do Cry, Scented Gardens for the Blind, and Intensive Care. My main methodology is based in close readings of these novels. The chosen novels critique the reductionist framework of occupational therapy in the mid-twentieth century. I will engage critically with the writings of one of occupational therapy’s founders, Dr. Adolf Meyer, to supplement Frame’s critique of occupational therapy in mid-twentieth century New Zealand. I will be drawing on the histories of psychiatric treatment and medicine, and also Frame criticism to support this investigation. Frame’s representation of occupational therapy in Owls Do Cry is negative on the surface, however the reasons for this cynicism become clear when the history of occupational therapy has been investigated in detail. The potential for a positive and innovative outlook on occupational therapy becomes available to us in the novel Scented Gardens for the Blind. Intensive Care develops the idea of ‘industrial rehabilitation’ for soldiers, warning of the dangers of institutional control over the rehabilitative transition to the social sphere of occupations.