Článek se zabývá analýzou tří autobiografií osob s autismem přeložených do češtiny – Nikdo nikde (Donna Williams), Život za sklem (Wendy Lawson) a Život s Aspergerovým syndromem: příběh psychoterapie (Christine Preissmann). Popisuje, jak autorky referují o svých specifických příznacích a zájmech, rodinných a partnerských vztazích a kariérách. Analyzuje, jaké strategie zvolily pro boj s autistickým postižením. Dochází k závěru, že lidé s autismem považují za nejtěžší jiné příznaky autismu, než bývá tradičně popisováno v učebnicích a monografiích o autismu. V případě těchto tří autobiografií je subjektivně nejhůře snášeno „smyslové přetížení“ ve vypjatých situacích. and Autobiographies of persons with autism: unknown views on inner experience of autistic handicap
The article analyses three autobiographies of autistic individuals translated into the Czech language – Nobody nowhere (Donna Williams), Life behind glass (Wendy Lawson), and Life with Asperger syndrome: a story of psychotherapy (Christine Preissmann). It shows, how the authors describe their specific symptoms and interests, family and partner relationships and career. The analysis focuses on strategies that were selected by the authors for coping with the autistic handicap. It comes to a conclusion that autistic persons consider different symptoms to be the worst than those conventionally described in textbooks and monographs on autism. In these three autobiographies, sensory overload in stressful situations was estimated from the subjective point of view to be the most unpleasant symptom.
In the novel Seventh Autobiography, writer Ota Filip established a wide range of strategies for using quotes from archival documents from the State Security Archive. The writer attempted to respond to public accusations of his collaboration with agents of Czechoslovak military intelligence in the 1950s when he betrayed his colleagues who were planning to escape to West Germany. In the late nineties this scandal led to the writer’s son’s suicide and forced Filip to write his autobiographical novel to deal with the burden of guilt. By using this quotation strategy the writer was able to reassess past events from the perspective of his current position to follow his personal and artistic development and redefine his identity following this chain of traumatic experiences. Quotation also allows us to follow the gradual interlinking of individual autobiographical motifs in wider structures and to observe the relations functioning between them, which enable the autobiographical space of the writer’s literary work to be established. An important and simultaneous process in this context is the development of literary communication between the writer and the recipient of his novel. For the first one, this is an opportunity to share his personal experience and observe how it influences the process of dealing with the problematic past. The main goal of the article is to present the essential strategies for quoting from archival documents in the text of Seventh Autobiography. The author of the study particularly emphasizes the influence of quotation in the field of relations between the actual author of the literary text and the agents holding his security files in the past and the way the disproportion in accessibility of source material on the part of the recipient of the novel influences the process of literary communication. The final result of conducting analytical activities in these fields creates a broader picture of the writer’s methods for dealing with his experiences.