Thinking in Pictures by Temple Grandin

Thinking in Pictures
by Temple Grandin

After I had my daughter, I remember a couple incidents where I had trouble thinking in words. My brain instead thought in images, colors, smells and textures. It was a fascinating experience, but very disconcerting. I put this down to sleep deprivation but it leapt to mind when I started reading about Temple Grandin.

“I think in pictures. Words are like a second language to me. I translate both spoken and written words into full-color movies, complete with sound, which run like a VCR tape in my head… I create new images all the time by taking many little parts of images I have in the video library in my imagination and piecing them together.”

Temple has been referred to as an autism advocate and animal behaviorist. She has a bachelor’s degree in psychology and a master’s, as well as a doctorate, in animal science.

Her mind wanders from image to image, making associations. If she wanders too far from the problem she is trying to solve, she is able to stop her free associating and tell her brain to get back to the question at hand. Some people with autism lack the ability to stop their mind’s free association. Abstract ideas are very difficult to grasp for Temple. She has to associate them with concrete images.

She explains that people think along a spectrum - from thinking in words, to thinking in a combination of words and vague images to, like Temple, thinking in pictures that they then have to translate into words. In her fascinating TED Talk she explains it so well. She shows how when she says “steeple,” most people think of a generic line drawing type steeple but her mind pulls up exact photographs of all the steeples she has ever seen until she chooses one. Then she can combine it with other images, such as snow falling on a church, to make it winter time.

One aspect of autism that I wasn’t aware of was the sensory overload that Temple had to deal with, from sound and physical touch. She goes into great depth about what she, and others she knows of, experience. Too much sound or physical touch is painful to her. And yet, she created something akin to a cattle squeeze shoot, to help her calm down with just the right amount of pressure. It’s like a giant hug. She says it calms her nerve endings.

As an autism advocate, the insight she can give to parents of autistic children is a blessing. The insight she brings to how people with autism think and how people in general think and communicate is illuminating. She explains the autism spectrum with concrete ideas to help everyone understand what an autistic person might be experiencing.

Temple Grandin has designed equipment for handling cattle and other animals on ranches, in veterinary hospitals and for livestock companies. “In fact, one third of the cattle and hogs in the United States are handled in equipment I have designed.” This is said without hubris. Her goal was to help the animals not be scared by what they were undergoing, to make sure they were treated humanely. Her greatest joy comes from the fact that she is making the world a better place in some regard.

Her devotion to making life decent and death painless for animals is inspiring. She explains that it’s easy for people who only think in words to deny that animals have the ability to think because they don’t speak, but if you think in pictures like she does, it’s easy to imagine that animals can think. “We owe the animal respect.”

This book shares Temple Grandin’s own experiences in an effort to illuminate all the information she has to share on autism, including her own observations and conclusions. Perhaps people in the special education arena know all about her, I’m not trained specifically in that area though I do have an education degree, but I believe she provides tremendous insight for education purposes. She takes the minute details and makes the connections to the big picture. I want to read all her books now and hear her talk. I can’t resist telling people about what she has to say. I believe she is the best advocate that people with autism could have.