Occupational therapy provides countless avenues for exploration. Advances in medicine and its allied disciplines have resulted in the subject matter required in the training for these disciplines becoming more and more complex. Thus it is all too easy to become lost on a byway if the road plan has not been well learned and its guide signs clearly understood. The purpose of this material is to emphasize the main avenues, and to keep clear the relationship between them and their expanding periphery. It has been by design that a number of references and quotations are included. It is intended that the references be read, for some are essential to proper understanding, some are intended to guide reading toward authoritative sources.