Curious question after watching the HBO Temple Grandin Movie

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Something I noticed watching the movie. Whenever she encountered the horse that had died when she was in boarding school she asked "Where did he go?" Later the theme was developed further when she encountered cows who had drowned, and at the funeral of the man who had been her science teacher at boarding school, she commented that he wasn't in there any more, and had difficulty understanding the point of the ceremony.

I have many autistic like attributes, but I don't think I would qualify for the diagnosis. For one thing, I have no aversion to being touched. In fact I will give a bear hug to almost anyone who is willing to receive one. And I have no aversion to eye contact. In fact eye contact is one of my favorite sources of stimulation. And at funerals, I have no difficulty understanding people's responses. In fact I co-experience their feelings much of the time. Sometimes I have great difficulty being in the presence of people who are crying without crying with them. Of course other times, I stand there like a stump unable to respond. It's kind of weird now and then. And those online tests like Mind in the Eyes, and Facial memory tests, I fail with flying colors, but I have no difficulty figuring out most of the time, what people mean by their facial expressions when the person is actually feeling their feelings in my presence. I think I acquire nonverbal information from a person via other means.

I do experience sensory issues, and I stim constantly, and I experience the attributes that were portrayed in the HBO special regarding feeling the person is no longer in their, when they die. I have never been present when a cow was electrocuted, but I have been present several times when a pet was put down. And I wasn't present when my Father died, but when I saw his body on display in the funeral home, it was surprisingly obvious that he wasn't in there anymore. His body felt like an vacant house. I usually feel the essence of people who have been living in home without the owners being present, as if I am feeling it from the walls of the house, but after the owners of the home haven't been in it for a month or two the house starts to get a feel to it that I have associated with a vacant house feeling. My Dad's body felt vacant in the funeral home.

This is what I am curious about. Is this what Temple was talking about in those scenes? Is this ability to perceive this in other people and/or animals, a common AS or HFA experience/ability?

Never forget for a moment that movies are exaggerations for dramatic effect and depictions of people with ASDs almost always written (even if adapted from a firsthand account) by persons who do not have autism, so take those depictions with a sizable grain of salt.

I haven't seen the movie yet, but I have read Grandin's The Way I See It and some descriptions similar to what you're describing I found a little difficult to identify with - not because I never had that thought, perception or feeling - but because at the age of 50, I can't really remember clearly what I may have thought or felt when I was a child. During my 20s I refused to attend funerals pretty much for reasons like what you're referring to. I felt the person was gone, so it was morbid and ridiculous to insist on a social gathering to boo-hoo over a body. Leave everyone to mourn in their own way, I felt, and dispose of the empty shell as an empty shell.

Later, I came to realize that funerals aren't for the dead, they're for the living. Though I may not be a social creature by nature, most others are, and they have a psychological and emotional need to share grief, in order to release it and find that mythical condition 'closure'. I don't fully understand it, because I don't experience it like they do, but because I love and respect them, I will attend. Somebody has to carry the box without sobbing, tripping and falling in the hole. And no, I am not without emotion over the situation, I just do not have the synaptic connections to share my grief in a bond with other people. Its my grief, not our grief. If I am moved to do so, I will sob like a little girl with a skinned knee when I am alone, thank you very much.

Anyway, what I'm saying basically, is that the reactions and statements ascribed to Grandin in these scenes sound like what I would expect from a child with AS, not from an adult, who would have figured most of it out over the course of their life by simple observation and deductive reasoning. Most of us 'of a certain age' simply had to figure this stuff out on our own, because nobody ever told us we had a handicap, they just told us what we were thinking and feeling was 'wrong', or 'not normal' and left us to work out for ourselves what 'normal' meant.

Same thing for things like touching and eye contact - I was taught to do and to accept certain things because my parents insisted. I'm not nuts about social huggers, but I understand the gesture and it doesn't cause me to pull away and hit people. Its just not pleasant in the way that inmate hugs can be. Eye contact - I can do it, to keep people from thinking I'm not listening, or to communicate sincerity, but I'm much more comfortable during conversation, to look elsewhere. By the time I was a teenager, I just did these things without thinking, but when I was little you'd have thought "Look at me" was part of my name.

I don't have any particular reason to think its connected with Autism, but I know exactly what you mean about houses. I think anyone can look at a corpse and know there's nothing going on in there, but houses do seem to absorb a living essence when they're occupied that dissipates slowly once they're empty. Have you ever noticed how rapidly a house will deteriorate and begin to collapse when its left unoccupied for more than a year? Its not just because of upkeep - some people do nothing to maintain the property while they're living on it, but it will remain fairly intact if they don't intentionally vandalize the place. But have the occupants move out and let it sit for two years and it will start to collapse.

My family used to have regular reunions and get-togethers on the property where my grandfather grew up and the old farmhouse that had been lived in for three generations was a little run down, but still standing and in relatively good shape - as a child, my cousins and I used to play in it and no one worried as long as we stayed away from the well. Then the property sold and five or six years went by with no one going out there. When we finally drove out to the farm again for nostalgia's sake, the only thing still standing was the stone chimney. Nobody had knocked the house down, it was still there, it had just rotted and collapsed, after standing in good condition for a hundred years.

I have similar experiences related to the cadavers in my anatomy lab. I think it's because they aren't moving in the small ways that living humans, even sleeping ones, move.

It makes sense that living humans should be able to recognize dead ones at a glance, and be able to emotionally recognize that these are no longer the living people they knew. It's very important to leave dead bodies behind because there is a large health risk involved in staying close. And because we loved those people while they were alive, it's very important to know that they are not those same people anymore when they are dead. I think that's why we have this aversion. It's a survival strategy.

You'd have to ask her.

For me, people and animals don't innately feel real; I know they're as real as I can determine, but they don't feel it. I first saw people as individuals and separate from me when I was 25.

Probably the whole lack of empathy thingy.

I read in the books that she can't eat foods like jello, why then did they say that an yogart were the only things she could eat? This is why if my novel ever becomes insanley popular and they want to make a major motion picture from it, they better involve me in the process and make sure that I approve every single word in the script or else it they can forget about the movie deal.

I suppose I will need to figure out how to accomplish that.


You're right. It doesn't fit the pattern. I guess she was talking about a different experience than what I have. One of the greatest sources of miscommunication is when the words used have different meanings the the parties that are communicating.

Questioning details topic

The question "Where did he go?" could be interpreted as wondering what happens to the life force of the person, what is commonly referred to as a soul.
When I was young I used to wonder about this too, as did my NT children.

What is interesting is that she spoke of it as a young adult, according to the film.

Everyone's autism is unique, as in how it is expressed.

Hi Willmark---I found your post to be quite interesting. That is a good question you ask. You are listed as NT---but you seem to indicate that you have some AS/autism traits. I will give you my perspective as I am AS/autistic.

Let me start with the person not being in there anymore. I went to a funeral home for the first time when I was in junior high school for my great uncle whom we had visited frequently. But, my impression of him lying in a casket was that I was viewing a wax figure representing him. Now, I realized it was really him, but this is just how he appeared to me. The fact that there was no movement at all, and the different texture to his complexion, gave the appearance of an absence. I view the deceased as a shell of a former existence. Without life, there is "nobody home" anymore. The spirit has moved on. I feel many people view death in this manner. As for Temple Grandin, I pondered what she meant too. I believe she was trying to understand where the "life" had gone too. So, your vacant house analogy is what I feel like Temple Grandin was experiencing. Where did the life go? That is how I feel.

Now for some autistic attributes discussion:

*no aversion to being touched---For me, being touched, especially if I am not expecting it, causes me great aversion. I want to yell "Stop!", but I don't because that would be rude. But why must people give me that pat on the shoulder as they walk by me at church, etc.? I don't want touched. Touch can feel downright weird to me and like it is not supposed to be. My wife, when we were dating, noticed I didn't like to hold hands. When I do hold hands it's like a lot of my awareness is shifted away and into the strange sensation of the touch causing me to lose awareness of what I am doing. My focus is there in the touch instead.

*eye contact---I am perhaps a little better, but when someone looks at me in the eyes I feel myself moving my eyes away like a magnet is pulling them aside. I used to think of myself as an "eye dodger." I wondered why it was so hard to look someone in the eyes. They look at my eyes and I look the other way automatically. Today, after receiving some therapy for this, I find myself often locking onto someone's face unable to move off of them---the Aspie Stare. And then, I still do the eye dodge frequently. But yes, eye contact is an issue with me and with many on the spectrum.

*empathy (crying at funerals, etc.)---I am sorry I cannot relate much here. I feel emotions, but I often do not project them. I have found myself acting out what others are doing (I also got therapy on how to act out emotions). At my grandparents' funerals on my Mom's side, I genuinely cried. On my grandparents on my father's side, I did not cry at their funeral. I also did not cry at my great uncle's funeral, and most of other relatives' funerals.

*stimming---yes, I stim too.

Hello glider,

When someone pats you on the shoulder at church, I think they are trying to communicate encouragement to you. I think it's a way of saying, without actually coming out and expressing it directly, "I love you, and I am praying for you.". If I were to pat you on the shoulder, that is what I would be trying to communicate to you, but knowing that you are Autistic, instead I would refrain from attempting to communicate that meaning to you that way, but I would still be reluctant to come out and say it to you unless I knew you would be comfortable with me saying that. A pat on the shoulder is an acceptable form of encouragement for most people, obviously not for all. Of course, unlike 'most NTs', whatever that is, I am not very forward. I might not pat you on the shoulder even if I didn't know you are Autistic, until I feel more comfortable being with you. That would be called typical introverted NT behavior perhaps. Respecting people's personal space is important to me.


Eyes to me are kind of like radar, or like antennae. I feel people with my eyes. Most NT folk think of eye contact like a way of communicating respect, and that you are paying attention, or care about what they have to say. Eye contact for me is like establishing a link with the other person's inner self. When I was younger, I avoided eye contact because I didn't want others to look into me through my eyes the same way that I was able to look into them. I assumed everyone felt people with their eyes.

I noticed on a YouTube recording of one of Temple Grandin's lectures, in the Q & A portion after, someone asked her about stimming, and she said that her parents trained her to not do it. And I think her squeazing machine would feel good to me too, except my nerves can be calmed much easier. Lying in bed with heavy covers on top of me works quite well.

Speaking of the movie... does anyone know if this will be available to watch in another way, other than HBO? I don't have HBO and really want to see the movie. Thanks in advance

This was also my interpretation also. I think she was talking about the actual life force - it's here one second, it is gone the very next. It is probably the most enduring human question about life, but she vocalized it very literally. If you have ever been in attendance at a human death, it can be a very strange feeling, at least it was for me.

I thought the movie was good, I was pleased with Claire Danes portrayal. I honestly didn't think I would "buy" her in this role but I thought she did very well.

I was surprised when my aspie husband quietly said "I think that way." regarding Temple's picture-memories of mechanical things. He said, for instance, the vent in the wall? His mind will envision exactly to the minute detail how things work in relationship to other mechanical things. Even if he personally has not seen them, he can just "know" how they will work. I know he is very smart and and an extreme systems thinker, but I was still taken aback by this revelation.

He also asked me regarding Temple's face "blankness" (the scene with the photos of expressions) and I confirmed to him that he does have a 'blank' expression a lot. I think he was surprised to hear that piece because naturally he doesn't feel blank on the inside.

one thing i didnt understand was that in the movie it said she can only eat jello and yogurt and stuff.

but i heard her speak at a conferece once and she advocated high fat foods saying they are good for the brain
and claimed she had steak and eggs that morning

was that colitis thing she had temperary or was it cured or something

I too think in pictures. I can process language fairly well, but I too am not understanding what a person is talking about if I cannot get a mental image of what is being said. I think people who are dyslexic also experience this. I too "envision exactly to the minute detail how things work in relationship to other mechanical things" though I don't think the degree numbers of the changing angles at the same time, though I might if I had taken geometry in high school. I don't think Autistic folks have a corner on this, nor are all Autistic folks like this. I listened to a lecture of Temple Grandin on Youtube. She said that Autistics come in three varieties. There are those who are like herself, those who specialize in music/math, and those who think in words and love history etc.

For what it's worth, I also am frequently told either that I look serious all the time, or that I have blank facial expressions.

From that YouTube lecture, I am ready to conclude that what makes one an Autie or Aspie is the amount, or lack there of, of brain module inter-connectivity.

This is the link to what I am refering to if anyone is interested:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2wt1IY3ffoU