ABSTRACT
The origin of the word “autonomy” is Greek. An autonomous individual is, etymologically speaking, someone who provides a law for himself. In much the same way as in the case of autonomy, the approach to such a challenging issue as that of the handicapped person’s integration in the “normal” context calls for an overturning of perspectives. Especially the latter word—integration—has constituted, and still constitutes, an obsession that blindly and a priori affects every approach to the problem. The myth of autonomy thus ends up embodying the stickiest of paradoxes. If autonomy is the goal, it also becomes the parameter against which the subject’s improvements are measured. While sometimes lying and deluding themselves, “normal” people have chosen autonomy as the centre around which their entire dream revolves, a dream they construct and give the disabled, not without a few superegoistic strains.
