On Clubismo and Collective Care

Our profession began as a moral response to dehumanization. Occupational therapy rose against the warehousing, sedation, and restraint of people whose bodies or minds did not meet industrial standards of worth. Our values are clear.

Ayres Sensory Integration came from the same moral ground. Dr.  A. Jean Ayres refused the narrative of the “bad child.” She showed that difference is not defect and that understanding the brain–body connection enables growth while restoring dignity and participation. By design, both frames resist systems that punish variation instead of nurturing it.

Yet in our own time we risk turning that resistance inward. Inside our profession, clubismo (when we act like soccer fans, treating theoretical frames like rival football teams) has become a subtle form of self‑sabotage. Rivalry feels powerful because it mimics belonging, but it drains the very energy that could sustain collaboration.

Rivalry grows from scarcity thinking. Scarcity tells us that recognition, funding, and legitimacy are limited. It whispers that another’s success must come at our expense. That belief belongs to the same social logic that built the institutions our founders opposed. It is competition by design, built to keep helpers distracted. Rivalry performs exactly as intended because it turns our attention sideways. We guard territory, we in‑fight, or gate‑keep, instead of dismantling and redesigning the systems that still warehouse, exploit, sedate, and exclude.

When we fight each other we stop holding each other up. We lose our footing and are buffeted by the storms of the world instead of changing their direction. We protect our camps instead of people. We argue theory while children are suspended, caregivers are exhausted, and elders are left alone. Meanwhile, the people who need occupational therapy, perhaps more than ever, are left to figure it out alone.

The antidote to scarcity is solidarity. Abundance grows when knowledge and care flow freely. When we train, consult, and imagine across approaches, the profession gains coherence. Coherence does not mean sameness; it means being connected. Is that not a major goal of the work we do—integration for the child, the family, the client, the community, and beyond?

We need each other. We need to hold one another up. We cannot fight each other or we will lose our footing. Together we can steady ourselves against the storms of the world and use that steadiness to make change.

Let us re‑author our inheritance. Let generosity become habit and curiosity become standard practice. Let us be known not for which model we defend but for the dignity we create.

We cannot heal while we are competing.
We can, however, rise together.
A rising tide raises all ships.