Between the Worlds of the Disabled and the Healthy: A Narrative Analysis of Autobiographical Conversations

The aim of the research is to gain understanding of the experience of the parents of physically disabled children. Special attention is given to the position of the parents in the border area between the two worlds: those of the disabled and the healthy. The theoretical and methodological tool enabling us to reach the goal is the hermeneutic and narrative approach (Čermák, 1999, 2002). Here we assume that story telling reflects the way in which our experience is structured and our understanding of the world and ourselves within it is constructed. If we as researchers want to learn something about the experience of being a parent of a physically disabled child, we may focus on the way such experience is structured through narration. The analysis of a life story allows for grasping the way in which disabled children's parents experience their fate, how they cope with it and what they make of it.