Temple Grandin

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Temple Grandin (2011)

Mary Temple Grandin (born August 29, 1947 in Boston ) is the leading American specialist in the design of systems for commercial livestock farming. She is a senior lecturer in animal science at Colorado State University at Fort Collins and is autistic .

Life

When Temple Grandin was two years old, she was diagnosed with "brain damage". She did not speak until she was three and a half years old and exhibited other behavioral problems such as violent outbursts of anger and looking at objects for long periods of time. Her parents disregarded the doctors' advice to put her in a home and from then on encouraged her intensely by building on her interests and inclinations. Grandin was accepted into a language therapy kindergarten. A nanny took care of the first steps in communicating with other children. After that she attended a number of private schools. This grant enabled her to study experimental psychology and write a doctoral thesis in animal sciences at the University of Illinois ( Urbana ).

She has taught this subject at Colorado State University in Fort Collins since 1990 . There she operates the “Grandin Livestock Systems” (Grandin livestock farming methods) developed by her. Her laboriously learned vocabulary , which she says she had to acquire like a foreign language, is so extensive today that she can easily give humorous lectures lasting several hours.

While driving with her aunt, she happened to make a crucial observation on the side of the road: cattle in a press machine so that they could be vaccinated.

“I was completely fascinated by the sight of the animals crammed into this machine. One would think that the cattle would panic when caught in this way, but the opposite is the case. You suddenly become very calm. This is not at all illogical when you consider that strong pressure is extremely calming. For the same reason, we also find massages pleasant. The trapping and treatment stand most likely gives the cattle the feeling that otherwise only newborns have when they are swaddled. Or divers underwater. They like that. Even as I was looking at the cattle, I realized that I needed that too. When I returned to boarding school in the fall, a teacher helped me build a "treatment booth" for me. I bought a compressor and used plywood sheets for the V structure. The resulting squeeze machine worked perfectly. When I went into my squeeze machine, I immediately calmed down. I still use them today. Thanks to her and the horses, I survived puberty. "

- Temple Grandin, Catherine Johnson: I see the world like a happy animal. Ullstein, Munich 2005, p. 13.
Temple Grandin (2010)

Since Grandin could not stand too intense touching in her childhood, she combined this experience with the livestock farming methods she had developed and first built a special, bed-like "touch machine" for herself with padded panels on the side, the pressure of which was applied to the person to be treated using a control can determine itself through several drives behind the plates. This machine initially helped her herself to reduce the uncomfortable overload of stimuli , and it is now also used for this purpose by other autistic people.

Temple Grandin is considered an expert in the field of animal behavioral biology as well as in the field of autism. For them, thinking in images and greater sensory sensitivity distinguishes autistic from non-autistic. She interprets the panic reactions of animals, which often come as a surprise for cattle breeders , cattle slaughterhouses and cattle farmers , as an indication that animals also have a similarly pronounced sensory disposition and possibly think in images. She sets these conclusions among others. a. through the construction of livestock husbandry and transport systems (see Klauenstand ). Their facilities changed the behavior of the animals so positively that dangerous situations and accidents with people and animals were significantly reduced.

The neurologist Oliver Sacks took up the self-description of Grandin during a conversation with her in 1995 and described life with autism in An Anthropologist On Mars (original: An Anthropologist On Mars: Seven Paradoxical Tales. ) Using Temple Grandin as an example.

Movie

In 2010, her life was filmed under the title You are not alone (Original title: Temple Grandin ) with Claire Danes in the lead role for HBO . This production has won a number of television awards including multiple Emmys , two Satellite Awards, and a Golden Globe , Screen Actors Guild Award, and Peabody Award . In 2016 she was elected a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences .

Fonts (selection)

  • with Margaret M. Scariano: Through the glass door. Life report of an autistic woman. dtv, Munich 1994, ISBN 3-423-30393-X .
  • "I am the anthropologist on Mars". My autistic life. Droemer Knaur, Munich 1997, ISBN 3-426-77288-4 .
  • with Catherine Johnson: I see the world as a happy animal. Ullstein, Munich 2005, ISBN 3-550-07622-3 .

literature

Video material

Web links

Commons : Temple Grandin  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Biography: Temple Grandin, Ph.D. On: grandin.com, accessed April 9, 2015
  2. ↑ I see the world like a happy animal. ISBN 3-550-07622-3
  3. ↑ Videos about the Squeeze Machine on BBC Horizon
  4. ↑ Temple Grandin's 'Hug Machine' , autism-help.org, accessed August 3, 2013.
  5. ^ Temple Grandin: Thinking in Pictures. Vintage 1996, as mainly chapters 1, 3 and 8.
  6. ↑ “She could understand 'simple, strong, universal' feelings, she explained to me, but the complex feelings and games of people embarrassed her. 'Most of the time', she said, 'I feel like an anthropologist on Mars.' "Quoted from: Oliver Sacks: An anthropologist on Mars. Rowohlt, 1995, p. 358
  7. ↑ Description of the film about You are not alone at the IMDb
  8. ^ American Academy of Arts and Sciences : Newly Elected Fellows. In: amacad.org. Retrieved April 22, 2016 .
  9. ↑ Expedition Brain series at Radio Bremen ( Memento from December 23, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) in the Internet Archive at archive.org, as of December 23, 2007, viewed October 5, 2009
personal data
SURNAME Grandin, Temple
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Grandin, M. Temple
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American specialist in the design of systems for commercial animal husbandry, savant, autistic
DATE OF BIRTH August 29, 1947
PLACE OF BIRTH Boston