Autismo, sexualidade e parentalidade: uma análise lacaniana dos discursos de familiares

Abstract

According to the psychoanalytic perspective, the family is a symbolic unit formed by affective bonds between subjects who play roles according to functions distributed among them. Challenged by paternal law, maternal desire and object a, this grouping has the fundamental objective of psychic transmission, and it does through the repression of instincts and the transmission of language. Seen as the first group of belonging, the family is a sure device with regard to the constitution of the subject. Since before birth, the child has been supported by the imaginary of those who support the maternal and paternal functions, and when they arrive in the world, they are approached by signifiers that cross over and link them in the culture. Therefore, the way the family builds bonds with each other and with the environment directly influences the psychic and social development of this being, which occurs in a peculiar way in cases involving coping with a diagnosis. Against these questions, this study objectived to analyze the speeches about autism, sexuality and parenting produced by family members of autistic people, from two perspectives: in Study 1 investigating the effects of autism on parenting from the speeches of family members of autistic people, and in the Study 2 investigating the effects of meaning about sexuality in family members of autistic people. It is a qualitative research, exploratory, cross-sectional and multiple case study. Eight mothers, three fathers, two brothers and a grandfather of adolescents considered autistic participated in the study, as well as two adolescents diagnosed with autism. This study did not objective to cover the family nucleus itself, therefore, it was not necessary for the whole family to participate. Data collection was carried out through semi-open interviews, with specific scripts for each group of participating members. The participants were contacted through an NGO located in a medium-sized city in the interior of Minas Gerais that serves family members of autistic people. Participants who met the inclusion criteria were invited to participate in an individual interview conducted in a reserve room of the NGO. The interviews were audio-recorded, with consent, and transcribed in full for analysis. Subsequently, the data were grouped by types of family members considering aspects of multiple case studies. After transcribed, the interviews were analyzed based on the theory of the four speeches of Jacques Lacan, based on the principles of the indicatory paradigm. It was found that the signifier "autism" occupies a place of mastery, being a reference for the family to maintain its order and social recognition: mothers make use of the maternal countenance as the Other that ensures the bond between family members and the community; while the parents appear as an adjunct in the care of the diagnosed child, taking care of external work - a dynamic that reiterates gender traditionalisms in parenting. Mothers, fathers, brothers and grandparents, through speeches that support the knowledge of science, reproduce romantic and heteronormative ideals, including speeches about the biology of bodies that would justify the normality / naturalness of meanings about sexuality - speeches that promote universalization and, consequently, the segregation of bodies. The particularity of the autistic speeches together with the speech of the analyst traced by the brothers and researcher, collaborated with the construction of a specific knowledge of the singularity.