American Temple Grandin is considered the most famous person ever to have been diagnosed with autism. She surpasses most of the mentally healthy people alive today in her intellectual development. Not only has she successfully overcome deficits in social and other skill development, but she has become a Ph.D., the world’s leading expert in animal science, animal behavior studies, and cattle equipment design. 

Temple Grandin: Who is she?

Temple is a successful businesswoman, professor at the University of Colorado, author of several books on autism and numerous scholarly articles in her field. These accomplishments might be considered outstanding even for ordinary people. But for someone who did not speak until age three and exhibited multiple behavioral disorders, such success seems unattainable.

Traditionally, high-functioning autism has been associated by practicing psychiatrists with Asperger’s syndrome. There is still debate as to whether it is appropriate to distinguish between the two diagnoses. According to DSM criteria, children with Asperger’s syndrome, unlike children with autism, show no clinically observable deficits in age-appropriate self-care skills, speech development and appropriate behavior.

In T. Grandin’s case, which makes it even more unique, this was not the case. Her diagnosis was not exactly consistent with the Kannerian Autism Profile, as the heroine herself continues to insist, but the diagnosis of Asperger’s Syndrome may not be correct in relation to Temple either.

Temple Grandin was born in 1947. In the first months of her life, she seemed to her mother to be an ordinary child, no different from the others, but at the age of six months, Temple began to freeze when held in her arms, to resist being touched. 

Over the next few years, her rejection of contact with others was supplemented by other typical symptoms of autism: an addiction to spinning objects, a desire for solitude, destructive behavior, outbursts of anger, an inability to speak, seeming deafness, an acute sensitivity to sudden sounds, and an overwhelming interest in smells. 

The diagnosis was made at the age of three. Only after six months of active speech therapy, the girl was able to say simple words, until then, she communicated with others only by mooing, shouting and violent gestures. In addition, she could paint her own feces on the walls, spit at others when she was tired, was hysterical at the sound of the ship’s horn, did not make eye contact, and reacted in no way to people who approached her.

Although Temple remained an autistic child, her acquisition of coherent speech and her ability to maintain relationships with others helped her escape from the chaos of feeling. Her sensory system, with its intense fluctuations in sensitivity, began to stabilize little by little. After Temple mastered speaking, her triad of deficits – social, communicative, and figurative – began to gradually subside. 

By the age of 6, Temple was speaking well and thus crossed the line that separates high-functioning autistic people from low-functioning ones who cannot master coherent speech. But even after therapy, her speech remained strange for a long time – jerky, monotonous, full of grammatical errors. Only at age 8, she mastered the skills easily acquired by children who barely learned to walk, which allowed her to attend school for regular children.

Temple’s Problems

Temple’s problems did not end there – the world of human relations remained alien and incomprehensible to her, so in school she remained an outcast to other children, although her mental development was at the same level as theirs. In 1956, Temple showed an IQ of 120, in 1959 – 137, significantly higher than the norm; she just did not know how to use it properly. 

With her poor grades, impulsive behavior, and outbursts of anger, she earned a reputation in school as a bad student and a bully. She struggled with math and languages, but in creative pursuits Temple was not equal – with undisguised pleasure to participate in theatrical productions, sewing costumes, sculpting, drawing, making crafts from wood. Only the Herculean efforts of her family and teachers helped Temple gradually blend into society.

As a teenager, Temple’s behavioral problems gained momentum, though they no longer had a pronounced antisocial connotation. She had to change a few schools, so her mother decided to seek help from psychotherapists. The only psychotherapy available for autistic children in the 60s was psychoanalysis, which unreasonably linked the emergence of autism with the psychic trauma of the mother’s rejection of the child. T. Grandin visited a psychoanalyst for several years, but, in her opinion, these meetings were not successful in her development, and she is still critical of this kind of therapy.

It was only in high school, in boarding school, that Temple became calmer and learned to restrain her anger. Over the past few years, her unhealthy hobbies, such as her fascination with elections, constant questions, and endless chatter, have subsided. Like most autistic children, she was acutely aware of the instability of the world around her: being separated from home and family, living in a new, unfamiliar place was very stressful for her. She wanted everything around her to remain the same – even dressed the same way and wore the same jacket day in and day out.

Putting her pain into a book

In her autobiographical book, Temple recounts how one day while she was at boarding school, a priest admonished her in church: “There is a door before each of you that leads to Heaven. Step through it, and you will be saved. After recounting this episode from her life, Temple went on to write: “Like many autistic children, I took what I heard literally. 

The priest’s words made a deep impression on me, and all my thoughts focused on finding the door to Heaven. I had to find that door. The door to the pantry, the door to the bathroom, the front door, and the door to the stable were all thoroughly investigated, but none of them corresponded to their high purpose. But then one day I climbed into the attic and found another door, the roof door. I felt a great relief, a sense of joy and peace. 

I found my door, which led directly to Heaven. The little wooden door became an important symbol for me and defined my life in many ways. Now, looking back, I realize that it meant growing up…”. Since then, the door metaphor has helped her develop and move on – first successfully graduating high school and then going to college.

Temple continued to be tormented by sudden panic attacks, hysterics. With their attacks, she could cope in two ways: either retreat into the inner world and try to minimize any external stimuli, or by hyperstimulation sensations – rotating, as in childhood, around its own axis, or riding on a fast ride. The solution to the problem came unexpectedly. 

While visiting her aunt’s ranch after high school, Temple had her first exposure to livestock life – she loved helping out around the farm and had already designed several engineering curiosities that improved operations (such as a mechanism that automatically opened gates). Once she saw a machine for cows – special equipment made of two iron flaps, where the animal was driven for various procedures – the cow, whose flanks were tightly squeezed by the walls of the machine, quickly calmed down. 

To the horror of her relatives, Temple decided to test the machine on herself, because since the age of 5 she had dreamed of a magic machine that could cuddle her affectionately, obeying commands: “I longed for love and a gentle embrace. But, at the same time, I avoided any excessive expression of feelings-as when I was a child, for example, when I was smothered in a hug by a fat, sugary-smelling aunt. Even when my teacher took my hand or put her hand on my shoulder, I flinched and recoiled. I sought bodily contact and, at the same time, avoided it…”