Temple Grandin has a Ph.D...
Illustration
Object:
Temple Grandin has a Ph.D. in animal science. She also has autism. Her books report,
from the inside, what life is like for a person with autism. She explains that many people
with autism enjoy and seek, even crave, bodily pressure, although they also can't tolerate
being touched.
When she was a young adolescent at her aunt's ranch she had a panic attack and asked her aunt to squeeze her in the cattle squeeze chute. Within seconds she became calm. She still uses a variation of that chute to calm herself. Grandin realized that people with autism become calmed by finding ways to be securely wrapped or wedged into tight places. The pressure frees them from a life that seems to bombard them with stimuli.
Biblical passages that include prohibitions can frighten us with restrictions. Yet, those negative commandments, although we fear they restrain us unnecessarily, don't thwart our true humanity. They free it.
When she was a young adolescent at her aunt's ranch she had a panic attack and asked her aunt to squeeze her in the cattle squeeze chute. Within seconds she became calm. She still uses a variation of that chute to calm herself. Grandin realized that people with autism become calmed by finding ways to be securely wrapped or wedged into tight places. The pressure frees them from a life that seems to bombard them with stimuli.
Biblical passages that include prohibitions can frighten us with restrictions. Yet, those negative commandments, although we fear they restrain us unnecessarily, don't thwart our true humanity. They free it.
