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I was grateful to be able to do something besides cry and grieve. And soon I was able to turn around and make our friends laugh too: when our server told us that the kitchen was out of whatever special was up on the board, I looked up at her and said, Well, that's the WORST thing that has happened to me ALL DAY! She didn't get it, but we all did. You have to laugh or the awfulness of it all could kill you. One of those people who laughed along and was at our side in so many ways during the early days of our grieving, including at the first memorial and the gathering that followed, was my boss, Julie Adam. When we overwork we get ill in one form or another. There are obvious neurological limits. If the blood stops flowing to the brain for as little as a couple of minutes, a stroke or some other kind of serious damage occurs. Despite the fact that we can improve our intelligence to some degree, it remains radically limited by our physical and emotional environment. There are also metaphysical limitations which are even more interesting. Each of us was born into a certain family in a certain country at a certain historical moment, all with no choice on our part. If we try to deny these facts--like Jay Gatsby in Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby--we blind ourselves to reality and come to grief. True, we can surpass to some extent the limitations of our family backgrounds or our historical situation, but such transcendence can occur only to those who accept the fact of their limitation to begin with. Consciousness itself is born out of the awareness of these limits. Human consciousness is the distinguishing feature of our existence; Alzheimer's is America's most common form of dementia, or memory impairment. As brain cells die, memory and mental function, such as organization, reasoning, and knowledge of how to perform daily tasks, go with them. Mood swings, depression, and aggression can accompany this state. A family history of Alzheimer's and environmental factors may also play a part in this disease. Scientists especially notice that two things--a buildup of plaque called beta-amyloid and a scrambling of proteins called tau--destroy cells and inhibit transmission of nerve impulses.

Huntington's is considered a young person's disease, with symptoms often showing between ages 30 and 50. The disease is caused by an inherited defect in a single gene. As nerve cells break down, a person may suffer writhing or jerking motions or sudden outbursts. Communicating, reasoning, remembering, and performing simple tasks become challenging. Isolation, depression, and suicidal thoughts may develop. But does this explanation account for the deep love and devotion Barb's players felt toward her? A similar question wracked the brain of the analyst who, before Anna Freud, coined the term identification with the aggressor. Hungarian psychoanalyst and close friend of the senior Freud, Sandor Ferenczi, had a dilemma. He was puzzled by the tendency of certain traumatized patients to become especially compliant at the very time their symptoms worsened--at times he expected disappointment and criticism. These patients had been, as he put it, misused children--children whose affections and innocence had been exploited by parents or other trusted adults. The love the children felt for these adults was real, which is what made the abuse so difficult to process. Ferenczi wrote eloquently of the dilemma of the child in this situation: Their personalities are not sufficiently consolidated in order to be able to protest, even if only in thought, for the overpowering force and authority of the adult makes them dumb. The same anxiety, however, if it reaches a certain maximum, compels them to subordinate themselves like automata to the will of the aggressor, to divine each one of his desires and to gratify these; Ferenczi explained that assuming the will of the aggressor was a part of the traumatic trance that allowed the child to preserve the feelings of tenderness that preceded the trauma and had been misused by the adult. She could illuminate aspects of the condition that no other scientist was able to describe or understand. As she delved deeply into the subject and wrote articles on her experiences, she quickly became an extremely popular consultant and lecturer on the subject, as well as a role model for young people with autism. As she looks back on her life from the present, Temple Grandin has a strange sensation. She emerged from the darkness and chaos of her earliest years of autism, her mind partially guided out of it by her love of animals and her curiosity about their inner lives. Through her experience on her aunt's ranch with cattle, she became interested in science, which then opened her mind to studying autism itself.

Returning to animals for her career, through science and deep observation, she made innovative designs and unique discoveries. These discoveries led her back to autism yet again, a field to which she could now apply her scientific training and thinking. It would appear that some form of destiny kept directing her to the particular fields that she could explore and understand with single-minded purpose, and master in her own ingenious way. For someone like Temple Grandin, the possibility of achieving mastery in any field would normally seem like an impossible dream. The obstacles in the path of someone with autism are enormous. Julie figured prominently in our family's life in so many ways, but one of the most welcome benefits of our years spent working together was the friendship that grew among us. As such, she was one of the few people outside family to witness a time when Lauren broke the rules. But luckily for Lauren, Julie would soften the terms of our daughter's punishment--something for which Lauren would always be grateful. We were unsure about the safety of the messaging application on her desktop computer, and we forbade her to use it. One evening--after we'd found her using it earlier and had issued a warning--we heard the tattletale ping coming from her bedroom. Our caution was the result of the many stories we'd heard (and which I'd shared with listeners) about the dangers of strangers on the internet. When we heard proof that she'd disobeyed, we grounded her: no using her computer, and no attending an Elton John concert to which I'd been given tickets. There were many tears and pleas, and she even hand-wrote a letter of apology (which I have kept) expressing her regret at having disappointed us. Her efforts proved effective: when Julie asked if she could take Lauren to the concert instead of us, we felt it was a bit of a win on both sides. Lauren got to go, and we got to stick to our guns by not taking her. Consciousness is the awareness that emerges out of the dialectical tension between possibilities and limitations. Infants begin to be aware of limits when they experience the ball as different from themselves; Through a multitude of such limiting experiences they learn to develop the capacity to differentiate themselves from others and from objects and to delay gratification. If there had been no limits, there would be no consciousness. Our discussion so far may seem, at first glance, to be discouraging, but not when we probe more deeply.

It is not by accident that the Hebrew myth that marks the beginning of human consciousness, Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, is portrayed in the context of a rebellion. Consciousness is born in the struggle against a limit, called there a prohibition. Going beyond the limit set by Yahweh is then punished by the acquiring of other limits which operate inwardly in the human being--anxiety, the feeling of alienation and guilt. But valuable qualities also come out of this experience of rebellion--the sense of personal responsibility and ultimately the possibility, born out of loneliness, of human love. Confronting limits for the human personality actually turns out to be expansive. For each of these diseases, certain medicines can help control symptoms and slow progression, but there is no cure. Scientists believe that inflammation may play a key role in degeneration. Taking measures to maintain brain health can only help boost one's ability to hold them off for as long as possible and to face them with strong reserves if and when they arrive. Exercise, which boosts circulation to the brain, is key. Nutrient-rich fruits and vegetables protect brain cells with their anti-inflammatory and antioxidant powers. Omega-3 fats are abundant in brain cell membranes and can be boosted by consuming fish and olive oil. essential oils can be part of the plan. WHAT essential oils CAN DO: essential oils and other cannabinoids may help with these disorders because of their inherent neuroprotectant properties. essential oils's anti-inflammatory and antioxidant properties may help prevent damage and degeneration in the first place. Research shows that essential oils may or may not act through the endocannabinoid system to deliver its benefits for these diseases, but it appears to be working--and as of 2018 scientists are looking for the mechanism. He labeled this phenomenon the confusion of tongues between the adult and the child. He noted that, at the times these patients felt most threatened, they worked harder to read and comply and identify with him. But the key to Ferenczi's discovery was that the identification was so strong and unconscious that they did not know their own minds. This concerned Ferenczi because he saw the potential for him to accept their compliance and neglect further exploration. We see in my example of coach Barb how the gymnasts not only defended a coach who bullied them but were also furious on her behalf.

They saw a coach who worked hard, cared, and was committed to the team. They saw this, in part, because she regularly told them of her heroism, but she backed her words with action. If enduring her misuse of them meant getting to stand in her reflected glow, to be an insider, to share in her love of the sport, and even to feel that love from her, this was worth it. Cyclical psychodynamics takes into account the behavioral side of this phenomenon. Coach Barb offered a number of perks to those who identified with her and made her look good: she confided in them, made them feel special, and gave them an elevated status. And yet she managed to find her way to the two subjects that opened up possibilities for advancement. Although it might seem as if luck or blind fate led her there, even as a child she intuited her natural strengths--her love and feel for animals, her visual powers of thinking, her ability to focus on one thing--and leaned on them with all of her energy. Moving with these strengths gave her both the desire and resiliency to put up with all of the doubters, all those who saw her as strange and different and who found the subject matters she chose to study too unconventional. Working in a field where she could use her natural empathy and her particular way of thinking to great effect, she was able to delve deeper and deeper into her chosen subject, arriving at a powerful inside sense of the world of animals. Once she had mastery in this realm, she was able to apply her skills to her other great interest--autism. Understand: achieving mastery in life often depends on those first steps that we take. It is not simply a question of knowing deeply our Life's Task, but also of having a feel for our own ways of thinking and for perspectives that are unique to us. A deep level of empathy for animals or for certain types of people may not seem like a skill or an intellectual strength, but in truth it is. Empathy plays an enormous role in learning and knowledge. Even scientists, renowned for their objectivity, regularly engage in thinking in which they momentarily identify with their subject. And to be honest, I was honoured that my boss wanted the company of our teenaged daughter. Looking back now, I'm glad that Lauren made her own choices, even if I didn't immediately approve of or appreciate them. Rob and I might have been disappointed by her decision to dye her hair pink, get a tattoo or contact her friends on MSN, but it was all part of growing up. We now cherish those acts of everyday rebellion and are as proud of her feistiness as we are of her graciousness and generosity. AFTER one more night in Ottawa, it was time to head back home to Toronto and begin the task of planning a second memorial, without letting much more time pass.