My Horse Is My Therapist: The Medicalization of Pleasure among Women Equestrians.

The research explores the therapeutic benefits of human-horse interaction, focusing specifically on non-professional female riders. It examines how these interactions can blur the lines between pleasure and impairment in the sphere of well-being.

Research Context and Approaches

• This study starts from the premise that there has been a significant increase in interest and literature regarding the therapeutic benefits of interactions between humans and non-human animals, particularly horses. This treatment paradigm includes hippotherapy and equine-facilitated therapy.
• Less research attention has been given to how horse-human interactions may affect notions of well-being and impairment amongst a wider, more “ordinary” sample of riders – those who are accomplished, but not professionals. This gap is what the study aims to address.
• To analyze these interactions, the researchers collected 50 “lifecycle narratives” from female non-professional riders. These stories provided the raw material on which the study’s analysis was based.

Findings and Implications

• The research revealed that interactions between women and horses can have a complex and multi-faceted impact on a woman’s well-being.
• These interactions can blur the lines between pleasure and impairment, indicating that the perceived benefits of horse riding can indeed challenge traditional understandings of therapeutic activities.
• This finding has implications for the medicalization of normality and pleasure in DSM 5. Traditionally, these categories were strictly separate; the implication is that perhaps more activities that are perceived as pleasurable could also be therapeutic.

Research Methodology

• The study employed a multispecies ethnographic approach, meaning that it studied the interactions of humans and animals within the context of their shared environment.
• Alongside this, it also used insights from medical anthropology to further situate the findings within the social, cultural, and medical contexts of well-being.