Eustacia Cutler
Eustacia Cutler, Temple Grandin’s mother, earned a B.A. from Harvard, was a band singer at the Pierre Hotel, New York City, performed and composed for NYC 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 Temple in the conservative world of the ’50s when autistic children were routinely diagnosed as infant schizophrenics.
Her latest book, Autism Old As Time, is a collection of essays written to take the reader on a journey through history, examining the impact of autism on the opinions and solutions of writers, poets, and other prominent individuals from the early 19th century through today. While her first book described raising Temple, this book describes the journey that Ms. Cutler took as she came to terms with autism in her life and saw our ever evolving capacity, as individuals and as a society, to keep re -inventing ourselves. She looks at autism from the point of view of the phoenix: that ancient symbol of culture renewing itself.
Ms. Culter has also hosted a series of Conversations with Eustacia Cutler where she interviews autism experts from around the world. These can viewed on the Temple Grandin Eustacia Cutler Autism Fund website.
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.