Autism and Us: Old As Time

Eustacia Cutler, Temple Grandin's mother, earned a B. A. from Harvard, was a band singer at the Pierre Hotel in New York City, performed and composed for New York cabaret, and wrote school lessons for major TV networks. Her research on autism and other disabilities created the scripts for two WGBH television documentaries: The Disquieted and The Innocents, a prize-winning first. Her 2006 book, A Thorn in My Pocket, describes raising her daughter, Temple Grandin, in the conservative world of the 1950s when autistic children were routinely diagnosed as infant schizophrenics. Today Cutler lectures nationally and internationally on autism and its relation to the rapidly emerging bio-neurological study of brain plasticity. She discusses what causes rigid behavior in autism, the toll it takes on the family, and how current research into the neural nature of consciousness is pointing toward insightful possibilities of change. She lives in New York.