Book Review

Book Review: Thinking in Pictures by Temple Grandin, PhD

Recommended by a co-worker, and made into an HBO movie with Claire Danes, “Thinking in Pictures” is effectively Dr. Temple Grandin’s attempt to explain how, as an autistic person, she thinks differently. As a computer science major, I am kind of fascinated by this subject. Had I gone to college 5 years later I probably would have majored in neuroscience (I did a lot with AI).  Also autism and a host of other “chronic” conditions are a true challenge for our country’s health system.

Dr. Temple Grandin is responsible for designing a large number of the cattle processing facilities in the U.S., and claims it was her autism that allowed her to empathize with the cattle and so design facilities that would be more effective in handling them. She is also famous for her public relations work for autism. I was disappointed to learn that Ger and I wouldn’t be in Philadelphia when she comes to speak at the Academy of Natural Sciences later this month, but I finished the book anyway.

While I was expecting to learn from this book, I wasn’t expecting some of the things she wrote about to ring so true. For example, she wrote how she disagreed with a college professor who “speculated that humans had to develop language before they could develop tools.” I remember learning this in college too and just couldn’t see it. You don’t need language to build a tool. (How a person reacts to this statement is actually a good way to differentiate if a person is a visual or language based thinker).

Also, she writes how she enjoys reading since it is like ‘taking in information” that she can then access later when necessary. I must admit this is why I like to read, especially about people who have experiences or situations I most likely will never be in. Reading her descriptions about her thought processes made me realize I am a visual thinker as well.

From a health administration perspective, her book describing autism and what worked for her is very illuminating. The big takeaways here are that all autistic people associate details into categories to form a concept and “fear is a dominant emotion in their autism”.

What helps these people function most (and what helped her) is behavior therapy. For example, she didn’t have a concrete visual corollary for the abstraction known as “getting along with people.” It wasn’t until she had enough experiences that she could address this deficiency. She needed to be taught how to behave in situations because she couldn’t pick up subtle cues.

No doubt part of the reason she couldn’t pick up on subtle cues is because her nervous system is in a state of always being “on guard”. In autistics, their “flight or fight” response is always just a hair trigger on. She writes “my nervous system was in a state of hyper-vigilance”. For her, prescription drugs helped modulate her nervous system.

One of the reasons a person with autism is always in a state of tension is that they have sensory differentiations that are very real. People with autism experience touch, light, smell and sounds differently.  This is the one area in the book where Grandin gets a bit touchy. “I can emphasize with a laid-off worker because I can visualize his family sitting at the dining room table trying to figure out how the bills will get paid,” she writes. But she doesn’t understand how people can’t imagine or emphasize that other people who might process senses differently.

We know from “Blink” that under traumatic situations, a regular person can become autistic-like. Grandin writes that this is perhaps this flight-or-fight anxiety is “an old anti-predator instinct that has surfaced?” One of the keys to truly helping autistics is to help them create a situation that allows them to feel calmness, since then that becomes tangible and they can transfer that emotion. If the flight or fight response is on, not much of anything is going to be happening.

In general this was a fascinating book, which will spawn lots more reading (I have lots of notes). With autism being such a big topic, this book should almost be required reading for everyone on the planet. While a lot of the advice would be relevant to all people (for example she advises taking autistic children to the science museum and doing experiments with them) it is good advice nonetheless.  I really have an improved understanding how “animals and autistic people think without language”. I’m eager to see the Claire Danes movie now and see how it compares.