Temple Grandin

Temple Grandin ( born August 29, 1947 in Boston) is the leading U.S. specialist in the design of equipment for commercial livestock. She is a lecturer of Animal Science at Colorado State University in Fort Collins and autistic.

Life

As Temple Grandin was two years old, was with her a " brain damage " diagnosed. She could not speak until the age of four years and showed a lot of behavioral problems. Her parents disregarded the advice of the doctors to give them a home and sent them instead to a number of private schools. This support has enabled her to study experimental psychology and at the University of Illinois ( Urbana ) to write a PhD in animal sciences.

Since 1990 she teaches the subject at Colorado State University in Fort Collins. There she runs the developed " Grandin Livestock Systems" ( Grandin Livestock Husbandry methods). Your laboriously learned vocabulary that she had to learn in his own words as a foreign language is now so extensive that it can easily hold humorous, several hours lectures.

During a car journey with her aunt she had made a crucial observation random roadside: cattle in a pressing machine, so that they could be vaccinated.

"I was completely fascinated by the sight of crammed into this machine animals. One would think that the cattle react in panic when they are taken into the pliers, but the opposite is the case. You are suddenly very quiet. This is not so illogical, considering that strong pressure acts extremely reassuring. For the same reason, we also feel massages as pleasant. The capture and treatment status are the cattle most likely the feeling that normally only have newborns when they are wrapped. Or divers under water. They like it that way yet as I looked at the cattle, I realized that I also needed something. When I returned in the fall to the boarding school, a teacher helped me to build for me a " treatment level". I bought a compressor and used plywood for the V- structure. The resulting squeeze machine worked perfectly. When I went to my squeeze machine, I calmed down immediately. I use them today. Thanks to her and the horses I survived puberty. "

As Grandin in her childhood too intensive touch could not stand, they combined this experience with the developed of their livestock husbandry methods and initially built for himself a special, bed -like " touch machine" with lateral cushioned plates, the contact pressure the person to be treated by means of a control can be determined by several drives behind the panels themselves. This machine helped her self first, to reduce their unpleasant sensory overload, and it is now used in other autistic people for this purpose.

Temple Grandin is equally as expert in the field of behavioral biology of farm animals such as in the field of autism. Thinking in pictures and the greater sensory sensitivity differs for her autistic from non- autistic people. The for ranchers, cattle slaughterhouses and farmers often surprising panicky reactions of animals she holds on to indicate that animals have a comparably strong sensory disposition and may think in pictures. These conclusions it is, inter alia, to carry the construction of cattle entertainment and transport facilities. Your investments have changed the behavior of the animals so positive that dangerous situations and accidents involving humans and animals decreased significantly.

The neurologist Oliver Sacks reached 1995, the self-description Grandin during a conversation with her on and described in An Anthropologist on Mars ( in the original: An Anthropologist On Mars: . Seven Paradoxical Tales ) on the example of Temple Grandin 's life with autism.

2010 her life was under the title You're not alone ( original title: Temple Grandin ) with Claire Danes filmed in the lead role for HBO. This production was awarded with a number of television awards, including several Emmys, two Satellite Awards and a Golden Globe, Screen Actors Guild Award and Peabody Award.

Works (selection)

• Temple Grandin, Margaret M. Scariano: Through the glass door. Report an autistic life. dtv, Munich 1994, ISBN 3-423-30393- X.
• Temple Grandin: "I'm the Anthropologist on Mars". My Life as autistic. Earthscan, Munich 1997, ISBN 3-426-77288-4.
• Temple Grandin, Catherine Johnson: I see the world as a happy animal. Ullsteinhaus, Munich 2005, ISBN 3-550-07622-3.