About Face!

I very much admire the HBO award-winning movie "Temple Grandin", starring Claire Danes. That movie reminded me of the extreme importance in human life of faces.  I have read that no other animal puts so much value and information into the face.  That is one of the difficulties of being on the autism spectrum, the lack of attention to other people's faces and a lowered ability to read the face of others. I read a quote from the real Temple Grandin that the most difficult thing she ever did was believe that most other people could tell much of what others were feeling by looking at others' faces and using what we call "eye contact".  

In The Essential Difference, psychologist Simon Baron-Cohen suggests that autism is about a deviation of masculinity.  He says that human males are often more interested in things than in people while women are often more interested in people than in things.  Temple Grandin is quoted as saying that she could not believe how Claire Danes "became me" to portray Temple in the movie.  Watching it, you can see a special difficulty a girl might having if she were unable to read faces.  Danes holds her head at an odd downward angle throughout the film, not looking at others or paying attention to what their faces, bodies and the eye contact between others might mean to her.

Any special disfiguring of the face may have psychological consequences as well as social and romantic ones, especially for a girl in the adolescent and early adult years.  However, not only is Dr. Professor Temple Grandin extra-intelligent and articulate but she is a female.  That difference may help to explain her articulate and sympathetic ability to communicate and understand both humans and other animals.