Yesterday Temple Grandin was presenting her last book, Animals in Translation: Using the Mysteries of Autism to Decode Animal Behavior in Portland. I read the book a few months before, and it's one of the best non-fiction books I read in last years. She is an autistic person, and she said that this often helps her to understand animals, because of certain similarities in how autistic people and animals perceive the world. It's a deeply original book, and I feel very lucky that I could see her in person.

One thing I wondered about was: if I didn't know about her autism, would I notice anything strange in her behavior? Now I know the answer: no, I wouldn't. She is such a typical professor (she's an Associate Professor of Animal Science at Colorado State University), if there is such a thing. She talks fast, she talks emotionally, she packs information densily, and she gesticulates a lot. She spent half of time answering questions, and she listened very attentively to the questions and often got emotionally involved with a person she talked to -- nothing close to my stereotype of an autistic person, whom I imagined detached and preoccupied with her own inner stuff. In overall, she appeared energetic, very enthusiastic about her subject and very absorbed with it. Students must adore her.

That's what I observed; the book reveals a more complex picture.

I have difficulty understanding and having a relationship with people whose primary motivation in life is governed by complex emotions, as my actions are guided by intellect.

Temple Grandin. Animals in Translation.

Her book is a story of a person with a unique combination of strengths and weaknesses, a person with a highly developed intellect and unusual emotional life.

Hans Asperger, the German doctor after whom the syndrome is named, states that commonly held assumption of poverty of emotions in autism is inaccurate. However, my strong emotional bonds are tied up with places more than people.

Temple Grandin. Animals in Translation.

To use intellect in attempts to get better understanding of how other people feel is something I can relate to. When you get out of your habitual environment where emotional reactions were self-evident and questioned no more than reflects, you often have no idea why somebody reacted as he did. You have no immediate emotional response, and all you can do is to observe, perhaps to ask questions, and eventually gain some understanding. After that you will learn to have emotional response, which will be based on intellectual constructions. Intellect and emotions aren't necessarily orthogonal.