Anthropologist on Mars: the Grandin Temple case by Oliver Sacks - Essay Example

Thematically, Oliver dwells on the creative prospective of the diseases. He states that disorders play an important role in bringing out dormant powers and amazing development that are hard to imagine in their absence (Sacks, 1995). Although disease deviates the normal way of doing things, it is the creation of other abnormal ways by the diseases that form the subject of his work. Oliver dwells deep in the brain functions and its plasticity that enables it to coordinate and enable the body to function.

Autistic scale is a measure developed to diagnose people with autism and differentiate them from people suffering from mental impedance disorders. Kanner and Asperger were the first people to provide accurate evidence on autism that remained unchallenged till 1970 when Beate Hermelin and Neil O’Connor in London studied medical psychology which dealt with the mental development of the condition. They concluded that autism is a disorder due to a consistent upsurge of deficiencies of social collaboration with other people, spoken and non-verbal communication as well as performance and creative activities that led to an imaginative disturbance (Sacks 1995).

They proposed that people with autism had no notion and sensitivity of their own and others. In essence, they had no models of mind. In another development, Asperger noted that autism may have optimistic and rewarding features in children that may be helpful later in life for example, uniqueness of thought and familiarity. Sacks (1995) describe the state of the autistic children he visited in schools as disturbing. He notes that most of them were involved in queer and individual isolated behaviors like; screaming, fretting of hands, monotonous or reflex movements, abnormal behaviors like rapid whirling and digit play, loss of stability and organization along with sound imitation.

In severe and acute cases of autism, children may not develop language ability and may not survive. Autism in a broader sense is a condition that alters the development of brain in connection with the social association with people. This particular case details Temple Grandin, an autistic Ph.D. holder in animal science, a teacher at Colorado State University and a business woman. Sacks (1995) assert that autism is a condition that leads to severe deviation in the development of brain and mind.

Grandin was born with the condition and in her autobiography gives a detailed account of the progress of her condition. Unlike other autistic children who never develop past their violent condition, Grandin’s condition developed to that of concentration which finally favored her. Sacks materialize as one of the many neurologists who visited her to asses and study her rather peculiar case of autism. In fact, Dr. Sacks coined the title of his book on the phrase that was used by Grandin to describe how felt when she struggled to cope with human feelings.

Due to absence of a model of mind, the individuals with autism experience a short-circuited ability to associate with others or to appreciate them through compassion. The notion of having no concept of mind and the existing expressions of lacking a model of mind are strongly compared with Grandin's described familiarities. These included being incapable to understand collective signs of emotions confounded by the spontaneous puzzles, resolutions, and the ethnic conventions that permit most individuals to associate with unthinking simplicity.

The ensuing