Grammars of being: meanings and experiences of autism on childhood based on two assistance institutions in São Paulo city

• Grant number: 07/08554-4
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Doctorate
• Start date: May 01, 2009
• End date: November 30, 2011
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Anthropology
• Principal Investigator: Cynthia Andersen Sarti
• Grantee: Rosa Maria Monteiro López
• Host Institution: Escola Paulista de Medicina (EPM). Universidade Federal de São Paulo (UNIFESP). Campus São Paulo. São Paulo , SP, Brazil

Abstract

The study aims to understand the autism notions on the basis of the treatments offered by two institutions focused on the question, with different approaches. The research also intends to understand, by observation and interaction to the assisted children, who is the person-child that results of these various points of view or that is produced by these same points of view based on the specific character that he/she presents. The purpose is to analyze comparatively two institutions that assist children with autism in São Paulo City, one based on the psychoanalytic approach and other based on the behaviorist approach. Using epistemological references by anthropology, the illness is took as a social phenomenon which classification is produced not only by the specialist, but by everybody involved with it. So, the study intends to focus not on illness (or disease) as known by medical science, but on the illness idea. (AU)