TVScope: Horizon: The Woman Who Thinks Like a Cow BBC 2, Thursday, June 8th, 9pm
A sculpture based on Led Zeppelin's Stairway to Heaven has pride of place on the mantelpiece of Temple Grandin's home. It marks this inspiring woman's achievement of having designed the slaughterhouse equipment that enables American cows to walk serenely into barbeque heaven, in contrast to the terror and mayhem they previously experienced.
Horizon's vivid portrait of the formidable, brusque, cowboy-shirt-wearing Temple made for fascinating viewing. Most remarkable is that the achievements of this 58-year-old professor of animal science, best-selling author and government adviser are largely due to, rather than despite, her autism.
This documentary achieved much more than justifying its catchy title. Temple's lifetime has coincided with the growth of awareness of autism. She also, through her autobiography, added greatly to our understanding of autism from the inside. We were given a history of autism and an insight into Temple's extraordinary ability to understand animals.
Autism as a diagnosis was unknown when Temple was born. Her father was furious to discover he had a "retarded" daughter. Her mother spoke of her struggle to prevent Temple from being institutionalised, and her perseverance and years of speech therapy paid off when Temple eventually learned to talk at the age of five. The first breakthrough for children like Temple came when doctors working independently in America and Austria, incredibly, simultaneously coined the term autism to describe the withdrawn and disturbed children they were meeting.
Progress in understanding the condition was, however, slow, and Temple's mother described how she had to endure the hurt of the famous psychoanalyst Bettelheim's belief that autism was caused by the mother's unconscious wish that the child had not been born - "the cold refrigerator mother".
The next breakthrough for Temple was when, as a 16-year-old, she noticed how the cattle on her aunt's ranch relaxed when they were held tightly by a squeeze chute for their vaccinations. She went on to develop her "human squeeze" holding box, which she uses regularly to this day, to calm her ever-present anxiety. It is also now used throughout the world to soothe children with autism, who experience painful sensory overload when held by a human.
Once Temple was able to control her anxieties she began to achieve academically.
She transformed the treatment of animals through her design of treatment pens. Sadly though, it is fear which has contributed most to her insight into the animal mind. Fear is, she believes, the dominant emotion shared by animals and those with autism.
In the closing shot, the camera zoomed in on Temple lying in a field allowing a herd of large curious cows to nuzzle and lick her. It was difficult not to feel saddened that she could enhance the welfare of the cows but remains unable to experience meaningful relationships with us, her fellow humans.
Olive Travers is a senior clinical pyschologist