Por eles mesmos: o que as autobiografias dos sujeitos chamados autistas revelam acerca de suas experiências escolares?

Abstract

Autism, so often thought of as enigmatic, admirable, immediately incomprehensible arouses curiosity, charming and agonies. In the midst of all this, the school environment has much difficulty in seeing this singularity and, in an increasing movement, it seems to be seeking clarification regarding that. The goal of this research is to characterize, through autobiographical papers, the relationship that subjects diagnosed with autism establish with the school. In addition, it aims to analyze the power of autobiographies written by autistic people, as possible collaborators for the improvement of school practices, and to quote the authors of these narratives, composed by their school experiences, in which they revealed common situations for most school environments. This is a qualitative study (CHIZZOTTI, 2000, 2006). Our field for the analysis was composed by seven autobiographies, written by the following authors: Camargo (2012); Grandin (2014, 2015); Higashida (2013); Kedar (2012); Tammet (2007); Williams (2012). We used the content analysis technique (FRANCO, 2018) which allowed us to choose categories that were not predefined, but were created upon the study of self-reports. We choose Psychoanalysis (BIALER, 2014, 2015; FURTADO, 2013, 2014; MALEVAL, 2009, 2015) to discuss this research, as we considered as its practice the listening of the subject and, as a result, a path that turns right back to the writings of autistic people. It is possible to say that the authors of the autobiographies point out the need of the school itself to understand the exhaustion to which they are frequently subjected due to their different perceptions. The withdrawal from stressful situations, as well as the acceptance of moments of relaxation, are portraited as appeals. In the narratives, it is possible to see that the impose of physical contact, for example, that occurs in crowed moments with many students together and it is not usually well accepted by these subjects. The analysis of autobiographies reveals that isolation, or the search for loneliness, is constantly related to a certain protection associated with the differentiated sensory perception that they describe. Despite all of this evidence, there is no record of researches that investigate the impact of autobiographical narratives in the school environment. More than pointing out the relevance of these researches, the interest of this paper is focused on their possible impact at the school environment. We found that careful listening to every person is the main instrument that we must have to understand the singularities. The investigation based on autobiographical writings of autistic people contains information not only about these subjects, but it also reveals much more than we can know ourselves. As a product of this investigation, in addition to the dissertation, we also present an audiovisual resource made up of everyday school images of autistic children, in which the selected excerpts from the self-reports provoke a dialogue with the school records of autistic images. The purpose of the product is to spread out the discussion proposed here - the importance of the subject's own perspective on his behavior, self-reports as essential for understanding autism.