"Temple Grandin" film about a real life story
Temple Grandin
Temple Grandin
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Temple Grandin in 2011
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| Born |
Mary Temple Grandin[1]
August 29, 1947
Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.
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| Scientific career | |
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| Institutions | Colorado State University |
| Website | templegrandin.com  |
Mary Temple Grandin (born August 29, 1947) is an American professor of animal science at Colorado State University, consultant to the livestock industry on animal behavior, and autism spokesperson. She is one of the first individuals on the autism spectrum to document the insights she gained from her personal experience of autism. Grandin has authored more than 60 peer reviewed scientific papers on animal behavior, and is a prominent proponent for the humane treatment of livestock for slaughter. She also invented the "Hug Box" device to calm those on the autism spectrum. In the 2010 Time 100, an annual list of the 100 most influential people in the world, she was named among those in the "Heroes" category.[2] She was the subject of the Emmy- and Golden Globe-winning semi-biographical film Temple Grandin.
Contents
Early life[edit]
Family[edit]
Mary Temple Grandin was born in Boston, Massachusetts, into a very wealthy family. One of the Irish employees of the family also was named Mary, so Grandin was referred to by her middle name, Temple, to avoid confusion.[3] Her mother is Anna Eustacia Purves (now Cutler), an actress, singer, and granddaughter of John Coleman Purves (co-inventor for the autopilot aviation system), with a degree in English from Harvard University.[4] Her father was Richard McCurdy Grandin,[5][6] a real estate agent and heir to the largest corporate wheat farm business in America at the time, Grandin Farms.[7] Grandin's parents divorced when she was 15, and her mother eventually went on to marry Ben Cutler, a renowned New York saxophonist,[8] in 1965, when Grandin was 18 years old. Her father, Richard Grandin, died in California in 1993. Grandin is the eldest of four children and has three younger siblings: two sisters and a brother. Grandin has described one of her sisters as being dyslexic. Her younger sister is an artist, her other sister is a sculptor, and her brother is a banker.[7][9] John Livingston Grandin (Temple's paternal great-grandfather) and his brother William James Grandin, were French Huguenots who drilled for oil. He intending to cut a deal with John D. Rockefeller in a meeting, but the latter kept him waiting too long so he walked out before Rockefeller arrived. Then the brothers went into banking and when Jay Cooke's firm collapsed they received thousands of acres of undeveloped land in North Dakota as debt collateral. They set up wheat farming in the Red River Valley and housed the workers in dormitories. The town of Grandin, North Dakota, is named after John Livingston Grandin.[4][10]
Although raised in the Episcopal Church, early on Temple Grandin gave up on a belief in a personal deity or intention in favor of what she considers a more scientific perspective.[11]
Diagnosis[edit]
Grandin was never formally diagnosed with autism in childhood or in youth. The only formal diagnosis received by Grandin was of 'brain damage' at the age of two,[12][13] a finding corroborated subsequently when she was 64 years old, by cerebral imaging carried out in 2010 at the University of Utah.[14] When Grandin was in her mid-teens, her mother chanced upon a checklist on autism published by Dr. Bernard Rimland, a renowned American psychologist and founder of the Autism Research Institute. After reviewing the checklist, Grandin's mother hypothesised that Grandin's symptoms were best explained by autism.[12] Later, Grandin was determined to be an autistic savant.[15][16][17][18] A formal diagnosis consistent with being on the autism spectrum was made only when Grandin was in her forties.[citation needed]
Early childhood[edit]
Her mother, Eustacia, took Grandin to the world's leading special needs researchers at the Boston Children's Hospital, with the hope of unearthing an alternative to institutionalization. Grandin's mother eventually located a neurologist who suggested a trial of speech therapy. A speech therapist was hired and Grandin received personalized training from the age of two and a half.[19] A nanny was hired when Grandin was aged three to play educational games for hours with her. Grandin started kindergarten in Dedham Country Day School. Her teachers and class strove to create an environment to accommodate Grandin's needs and sensitivities.
Grandin considers herself fortunate to have had supportive mentors from elementary school onward. Even so, Grandin states that junior high and high school were the most unpleasant times of her life.[20]
The medical advice at the time for a diagnosis of autism was to recommend institutionalization, a measure that caused a bitter rift of opinion between Grandin's parents.[13] Her father was keen to follow this advice while her mother was strongly opposed to the idea as it likely would have caused her to never be able to see her daughter again.
Middle school and high school[edit]
Grandin attended Beaver Country Day School from seventh grade to ninth grade. She was expelled at the age of 14 for throwing a book at a schoolmate who had taunted her. Grandin has described herself as the "nerdy kid" whom everyone ridiculed. She has described occasions when she walked down the hallways and her fellow students would taunt her by saying "tape recorder" because of her habit of repetitive speech. Grandin states, "I could laugh about it now, but back then it really hurt."[21]
The year after her expulsion, Grandin's parents divorced. Three years later, Grandin's mother married Ben Cutler, a New York saxophonist.[8] At 15, Grandin spent a summer on the Arizona ranch of Ben Cutler's sister, Ann, and this would become a formative experience toward her subsequent career interest.
Following her expulsion from Beaver Country Day School (reports vary on the name of the school Grandin was expelled from, with Grandin noting it to be Cherry Falls Girls' School in her first book, Emergence: Labelled Autistic), Grandin's mother placed her in Mountain Country School (now known as Hampshire Country School), a private boarding school in Rindge, New Hampshire, for children with behavioral problems. It was here that Grandin met William Carlock, a science teacher who had worked for NASA. He became her mentor and helped significantly toward building up her self-confidence.[22]
It was Carlock who gave Grandin the idea to build her hug box (referred to as a "squeeze machine" by Grandin) when she returned from her aunt's farm in Arizona in her senior year of high school.[22] At the age of 18 when she was still attending Mountain Country School, with Carlock's assistance Grandin built the hug box.[23] Carlock's supportive role in Grandin's life continued even after she left Mountain Country School. For example, when Grandin was facing criticism for her hug box at Franklin Pierce College, it was Carlock who suggested that Grandin undertake scientific experiments to evaluate the efficacy of the device.[22] It was his constant guidance to Grandin to refocus the rigid obsessions she experienced with the hug box into a productive assignment, that subsequently, allowed this study undertaken by Grandin to be widely cited as evidence of Grandin's resourcefulness.
Higher education[edit]
After she graduation from Mountain Country School in 1966, Grandin went on to earn her bachelor's degree in human psychology from Franklin Pierce College in 1970, a master's degree in animal science from Arizona State University in 1975, and a doctoral degree in animal science from the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign in 1989.
Career[edit]
Grandin is a prominent and widely-cited proponent for the humane treatment of livestock for slaughter. She is internationally famous as a spokesperson on autism as well.[24]
Autism spectrum[edit]
Steve Silberman in his book, NeuroTribes, wrote that Temple Grandin helped break down years of shame and stigma because she was one of the first adults to publicly disclose that she was autistic. Bernard Rimland, a father of a son with autism and author of the book, Infantile Autism, wrote the foreword to Grandin's first book Emergence: Labeled Autistic. Her book was published in 1986. Dr. Rimland wrote "Temple's ability to convey to the reader her innermost feelings and fears, coupled with her capacity for explaining mental processes will give the reader an insight into autism that very few have been able to achieve."
In her later book, Thinking in Pictures, published in 1995, the neurologist Oliver Sacks wrote at the end of the foreword that the book provided "a bridge between our world and hers, and allows us to glimpse into a quite other sort of mind."
In her early writings, Grandin characterized herself as a recovered autistic and, in his foreword, Bernard Rimland used the term recovered autistic individual. In her later writings she has abandoned this characterization. Steve Silberman wrote, "It became obvious to her, however, that she was not recovered but had learned with great effort to adapt to the social norms of the people around her."
When her book Thinking in Pictures was written in 1995, Grandin thought that all individuals with autism thought in photographic-specific images the way she did. By the time the expanded edition was published in 2006, she had realized that it had been wrong to presume that every person with autism processed information in the same way she did. In the 2006 edition, she wrote that there were three types of specialized thinking. They were: 1. Visual Thinkers like she is, who think in photographically-specific images. 2. Music and Math Thinkers – who think in patterns and may be good at mathematics, chess, and programming computers. 3. Verbal Logic Thinkers – who think in word details, and she noted that their favorite subject may be history.
In one of her later books, The Autistic Brain: Thinking Across the Spectrum, the concept of three different types of thinking by autistic individuals is expanded. This book was published in 2013. An influential book that helped her to develop her concept of pattern thinking was Clara Claiborne Park's book entitled, Exiting Nirvana: A Daughter's Life with Autism. It was published in 2001. The Autistic Brain also contains an extensive review of scientific studies that provide evidence that object-visual thinking is different from spatial-visualization abilities.
Grandin became well-known beyond the American autistic community, after being described by Oliver Sacks in the title narrative of his book, An Anthropologist on Mars (1995), for which he won a Polk Award. The title is derived from Grandin's characterization of how she feels around neurotypical people. In the mid-1980s Grandin first spoke in public about autism at the request of Ruth C. Sullivan, one of the founders of the Autism Society of America (ASA). Sullivan writes:
| “ | I first met Temple in the mid-1980s [at the] annual [ASA] conference. Standing on the periphery of the group was a tall young woman who was obviously interested in the discussions. She seemed shy and pleasant, but mostly she just listened. I learned her name was Temple Grandin. It wasn't until later in the week that I realized she was someone with autism. I approached her and asked if she'd be willing to speak at the next year's [ASA] conference. She agreed. The next year Temple first addressed an [ASA] audience. People were standing at least three deep. The audience couldn't get enough of her. Here, for the first time, was someone who could tell us from her own experience, what it was like to be extremely sound sensitive ("like being tied to the rail and the train's coming"). She was asked many questions: "Why does my son do so much spinning?" "Why does he hold his hands to his ears?" "Why doesn't he look at me?" She spoke from her own experience, and her insight was impressive. There were tears in more than one set of eyes that day. Temple quickly became a much sought-after speaker in the autism community.[25] | ” |
Based on personal experience, Grandin advocates early intervention to address autism and supportive teachers, who can direct fixations of the child with autism in fruitful directions. She has described her hypersensitivity to noise and other sensory stimuli. She says words are her second language and that she thinks "totally in pictures", using her vast visual memory to translate information into a mental slideshow of images that may be manipulated or correlated.[26] Grandin attributes her success as a humane livestock facility designer to her ability to recall detail, which is a characteristic of her visual memory. Grandin compares her memory to full-length movies in her head, that may be replayed at will, allowing her to notice small details. She also is able to view her memories using slightly different contexts by changing the positions of the lighting and shadows.
As a proponent of neurodiversity, Grandin does not support eliminating autism genes or treating mildly-autistic individuals.[27] However, she believes that autistic children who are severely handicapped need therapy with applied behavioral analysis.[13] Additionally, she has claimed that she only will attend talks given by autistics who can hold down a career.[28] Although Grandin has identified three groupings of autistic individuals, a critic of statements by Grandin, Jonathan Mitchell, asserts that many autistic individuals aren't visual thinkers, that she makes generalizations about autistic people, and that her generalizations trivialize the difficulties associated with autism.[29]
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