This blog is in response to a twitter thread where it dawned on me that very few of us physiotherapists understand the political water that we are swimming in. So I thought of writing a blog that highlights the possible dangers of self-efficacy, person-centered care, or the biopsychosocial model and how it might intersect with a “pull yourself up by the bootstraps” approach to health. Specifically, I am exploring the questions “how much are we paying attention to the individual?”,…

We go toward the most unknown and the best unknown, this is what we are looking for when we write. We go toward the best known unknown thing, where knowing and not knowing touch, where we hope we will know what is unknown. Where we hope we will not be afraid of understanding the incomprehensible, facing invisible, hearing the inaudible, thinking the unthinkable, which is of course: thinking. — Hélène Cixous¹

As an aspiring clinician, I felt pressured to become familiar with the field’s foundational concepts, and to be a skilled follower of its basic tenets. Much like converting to a new religion, physiotherapy calls us to ‘abandon a corrupt set of beliefs … and then with the force of revelatory discovery, to be moved into the the light of truth’ ¹ We are stripped naked and baptised in the presuppositions of our profession, becoming One with those who came before us, knowing what they know so that we…