Abstract

LEITAO, Leopoldo Gonçalves. Sobre a equitação terapêutica: Uma abordagem crítica . Aná. Psicológica [online]. 2008, vol.26, n.1, pp.81-100. ISSN 0870-8231.

Our main purpose was to study the theme of Therapeutic Riding, in a longitudinal viewpoint. The account of our historical perspective, with particular incidence in the Contemporary Age, allows understanding the present situation. Thus, we emphasized some factors arising from an historical complicity lived between Man and horse, since the Prehistoric period up to the present time. In the 20th century, we distinguish some moments that contributed in a decisive way to the modern conceptualization of the therapeutic horseback riding: the success of Liz Hartel at the Olympic Games of 1952 and 1956; the sprouting of the German Model; and the international congresses. The need of empirical credibility related to the therapeutic application of the horse, and of its disclosure, is concurrently highlighted as well as the systematization of this area mainly centered on a medical model. The psychology, especially cognitive-behavioral, initially arises through eclectic approaches integrated in Hippo-therapy. Subsequently, in the last decade, psychology has coming to occupy a place of growing notoriety through the psychotherapeutic riding, in the different theoretical approaches (psychoanalysis, music therapy, theory of the archetypes of Jung, systemic theories, bioenergetics, psychodrama, existentialism, etc.) that can assume. Our subjective analysis focused in four complementary aspects: the incongruity between an obsessed search for the “proof” and the scientific strictness; the difficulty to differentiate the Therapeutic Riding disciplines that limits so much the intervention’s capacity for intervene like the conclusions that we can withdraw from the studies already done; the observed difficulty in the international disclosure of the majority of the works; and at last, the lack of sovereignty from FRDI while international entity representative of the Therapeutic Riding in 46 countries.

Keywords : Therapeutic riding; medicine; rehabilitation; psychotherapy; sports.

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