Temple Grandin

  b. 1947 | American psychologist/author

At The Bottom

— 1949

She still had difficulty getting the words out and often resorted to screaming because it was the only way she could communicate.

Temple Grandin’s parents were terribly worried about their young daughter.  At the age of two, she was not yet speaking and showed evidence of having emotional or neurological problems.  After seeing  several doctors, young Temple was diagnosed with autism, a neurological disorder that affects social interaction and communication and often results in repetitive behaviors.  At a very young age, Temple seemed overly sensitive to loud noises and would howl madly at sounds (like a popping balloon) that seemed like a normal part of everyday life; decades later, she explained that loud noises made her ears feel as if they were being pierced with a dentist’s drill.   Unlike most young children, she seemed averse to being touched  and would recoil or even cry  when her parents held her, as if physical contact with others was painful to her.  (In reality, Grandin wanted to feel the comfort of being hugged, but the stimulation was so intense that it overwhelmed her “like a tidal wave.”)  These problems did not lessen in intensity as Grandin moved through her childhood.  Though she eventually learned to speak, she still had difficulty getting the words out and often resorted to screaming because it was the only way she could communicate.  Her hearing problems also remained; in response to her oversensitivity to noise, her brain often seemed to shut out sounds entirely.  She was unable to speak on the telephone and often missed her favorite songs on the radio because her hearing simply cut off.