Occupational therapy

German occupational therapy took an ordinary word from the workshop and gave it a second job. Die Betätigung is, first of all, what you do to a control: die Betätigung der Handbremse is the operating of the handbrake, and a switch that has been pressed, pulled or turned has been betätigt. In a therapy report the same noun means occupation in the professional sense — anything a person does that matters to them, from making tea to mending a bicycle. The reflexive verb had prepared the ground: sich betätigen has long meant keeping oneself busy, and sich politisch betätigen is to be politically active. So when a report notes that die Betätigung is restricted, nothing mechanical has broken; the person is doing less of what makes up their day. The object settles it: a brake or a button points to the workshop, a person to the therapy room.