case study of victor the wild child

Old News, Vintage Photos & Nostalgic Stories

Victor of aveyron: a feral child who supposedly lived in the french wilderness until he was 12.

• Strangeness

“Feral child” is a term used to describe youngsters who grew up isolated from human communities and have never been accustomed to fundamental conventions such as language, education and rules for socially acceptable behavior. Throughout history, cases of feral children have been documented. In many such instances, the children were raised by wild animals, people believed. However, in recent times, the authenticity of many of these cases has been challenged.

Stories of feral children appear in folklore and fiction. In 1894, Rudyard Kipling published a famous collection of stories named The Jungle Book. It follows the adventures of Mowgli, a feral child raised by wolves who learns the languages of various wild animals and establishes personal connections with them. By the end, Mowgli learns to abide by conventions and becomes a functioning member of civilized society. The Jungle Book popularized the motif of feral children in literature and pop culture, and Mowgli became a beloved children’s character known for his compassion, kindness, and adaptiveness.

In reality, “feral children” rarely integrated fully into society. The lack of proper care, emotional stimulation, and education hindered their social progress and delayed their mental development. Feral children often became the subjects of scientific studies and debates that stigmatized them and turned them into lab subjects, used to prove scientific theories.

Such was the case of Victor of Aveyron, a French feral boy who lived in the woods of the Aveyron region in the late 1790s and was allegedly raised by wolves. Victor had reportedly been sighted by local villagers as early as 1794, and in 1797, he was caught by local hunters and brought to a town. A young widow cared for him there for several months, but he managed to escape and return to the woods. He voluntarily emerged from the woods in 1800.

The boy was then around 12 years old and couldn’t speak any language. The physicians who first examined him thought that he might have been deaf and mute. After he was examined at the National Institute of the Deaf in Paris, it was determined that he was completely healthy but had never come into contact with any language. He was comfortable being naked and had no problem with roaming around in cold weather, which led the researchers of the time to conclude that he was well accustomed to the harsh conditions of the wilderness.

When Victor of Aveyron was found, the Enlightenment movement was in full swing; many prominent scientists of the time believed that the ability to learn and abide by conventions is the only feature which differentiates humans from animals. Several researchers, including a famous instructor of the deaf named Roch-Ambroise Cucurron Sicard, attempted to teach Victor French and the basics of communication to prove that the development of one’s language and social abilities depends on one’s surroundings.

Although Victor showed some signs of progress, he was aggressive, hyperactive, and uninterested in learning. This eventually led researchers to the conclusion that he would never be able to adapt to any social convention, so they mostly gave up on his future. He was left to roam the corridors of the National Institute of the Deaf and become a kind of local attraction.

Fortunately, he was adopted by a medical student named Jean Marc Gaspard Itard, who arranged for him to move into his own home. Itard was the one who gave him the name “Victor”; up to that point, he was known only as the “Wolf Child.” Under Itard’s close supervision, Victor managed to learn several phrases and accept some social conventions, but never became a fully functional member of society. Still, he received proper care and led a peaceful life until 1828, when he died of pneumonia at an estimated age of 40.

Although Itard failed in his efforts to educate Victor, he is praised for founding an oral education program for the deaf and introducing new methods of pedagogy that include the use of behavior modification with severely impaired children.

Related story from us: Child soldiers of the American Civil War

In the last 50 years, while Victor’s life has been adapted several time for fiction or the big screen, such as in Francois Truffaut’s The Wild Boy , some academic researchers have speculated that very few genuine “feral children” existed, and that instead these children were probably abandoned by their families a short time before being found, or had severe disabilities. In some cases, the children being raised by animals were hoaxes perpetrated by the public. One professor wrote that Victor probably had a case of severe autism, rather than showing the effects of being raised by wolves.

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Feral child: the legacy of the wild boy of Aveyron in the domains of language acquisition and deaf education

Wayne Cayea

Language Acquisition has been hotly debated since Chomsky's theory of innate ability in the 1950s. Feral children. i.e.. wild children who grow up in extreme isolation, provide a unique opportunity to study the process of language acquisition. What we can learn can have a major impact on what and how we teach our young students, especially deaf - students whose language development may be delayed. Victor, the Wild Boy of Aveyron, a famous feral child, is the focus of this study. He was discovered in the French wilderness in 1800, after three to eight years alone in the forest. After five years of instruction at the Paris Institute for the Deaf, his education was abandoned. Victor never learned to speak and only ever became "half-civilized". Nevertheless, he left a tremendous legacy on the fields of education and language acquisition. His case helped develop many language acquisition theories, and numerous the techniques used in the attempt to educate him are still used in the field of education today.

Publication Date

Document type.

Master's Project

Student Type

Christie, Karen

Advisor/Committee Member

Schley, Sara

Bateman, Gerald

Note: imported from RIT’s Digital Media Library running on DSpace to RIT Scholar Works in December 2013.

Recommended Citation

Cayea, Wayne, "Feral child: the legacy of the wild boy of Aveyron in the domains of language acquisition and deaf education" (2006). Thesis. Rochester Institute of Technology. Accessed from https://repository.rit.edu/theses/4159

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The Mysterious Case Of The Feral Child Victor Of Aveyron

In December of 1798, three hunters in the Tarn region of southwestern France saw what looked like a child dart up a tree. Surprised, the three men investigated and found a naked boy of about 11 hiding from them in the branches of an oak. They called out to him, but he didn't seem to register their words. Somehow they managed to pull him down and carry him into a nearby town, where they entrusted him to an elderly lady. The boy was bizarre-looking. He apparently spoke no language at all, and he had an animal's nervous mannerisms, grunting and refusing to make eye contact. 

All this was documented by one Dr. E.M. Itard, who would later take care of the boy. Itard's book, "An Historical Account of the Discovery and Education of a Savage Man" (from 1802, available at Gutenberg ) described him as "disgusting" and "slovenly... spasmodic... like some of the animals in the menagerie, biting and scratching those who contradicted him."

Within a week, the boy had escaped the old lady. Nearby villagers spotted him skulking around wearing only the shirt he'd just been given. A clergyman had him captured and sent to Paris, where crowds gathered to see the boy soon to be called Victor of Aveyron, the most famous feral child in France.

Forever a child of the woods

France's National Institute of the Deaf and Dumb took an interest in the strange young boy and had him placed under the care of Dr. E.M. Itard, who named him Victor. Itard studied the boy's habits and concluded that like the earlier Peter the Wild Boy – who was kept as a royal pet — he had lived his whole life as an animal. His body was covered in scars, and although gunshots did not disturb him, his ears pricked at the sound of a walnut shell cracking. He adored walnuts, a taste he may have owed to the acorns and wild nuts he ate in the woods (via History ).

Itard attempted to teach Victor to speak, but the boy never quite caught on. Slowly, Victor learned to bathe, dress himself, show affection, and recognize certain French words. Nevertheless, he could not get the boy to speak more than a few grunted syllables. He never learned to say his own name.

Was this the "blank slate?"

Victor's discovery could not have been better timed. Since the middle of the 18th century, wild children and "savage" cultures had achieved a kind of cult status in Europe. British, American, and French explorers had finally come into contact with cultures that had not developed the same social and technological sophistication as Europe, India, China, and other settled civilizations. Exotic lands like Tahiti, the Edenic backdrop of the Bounty mutiny , seemed to be a remnant of mankind's childhood.

French philosophers like Jean-Jacques Rousseau (seen above) were convinced that Western civilization was a kind of fall from grace. Man was born noble and good, went the general drift; owning property and commanding others, fundamental to civilization, was what turned people wicked. In England, John Locke had argued that the human mind was a "blank slate" at birth, created by the culture around it (via Britannica ). These intellectuals pored over the world looking for examples of the "noble savages" whose "slate" had not been corrupted. 

Victor of Aveyron was one such " noble savage ," and Itard's book says explicitly that the boy represented a chance for science to explore how a mind becomes civilized. Perhaps it was inevitable that such an optimistic experiment would fail. Victor would die at 40, still non-verbal, his identity still unknown.

Victor of Aveyron — The Story of a Feral Child

• Unusual and Amazing
• Susan du Plessis
• April 9, 2023

In the late eighteenth century, a child of eleven or twelve was captured, who some years before had been seen completely naked in the Caune Woods in France, seeking acorns and roots to eat. The boy was given the name Victor and is often referred to as the Wild Boy of Aveyron.

Victor brought to paris.

When hearing of the capture, a minister of state with scientific interests, believing that this event would throw some light on the science of the mind, ordered that the child be brought to Paris.

In Paris, the boy became nine days of wonder. People of all classes thronged to see him, especially since it was an opportunity to see the romantic theories of the famous Jean-Jacques Rousseau in practice.

Nature versus nurture

Rousseau, a passionate critic of the society of his time, saw the possibility of reforming society through the education of children. In his  Émile,  he posits a  natural  development of the child, which must be protected from the influences of society so that the child can grow up as Nature intended him to be.

In essence, Rousseau believed that there is a natural development on which we can rely and which will inevitably take place, provided we can keep in check the “unnatural” influences of society. So, with Victor, the people of Paris had the opportunity to see a child who had grown up according to Rousseau’s ideals.

Rousseau’s theory in practice

What they did see was a degraded human being, human only in shape; a dirty, scarred, inarticulate creature who trotted and grunted like the beasts of the fields, and ate with apparent pleasure the most filthy refuse. Victor was apparently incapable of attending to even elementary perceptions such as heat or cold. He spent his time apathetically rocking himself backward and forward like the animals at the zoo. A “man-animal,” whose only concern was to eat, sleep, and escape the unwelcome attentions of sightseers.

As usual, expert opinion was somewhat derisive of popular attitudes and expectations. The great French educator and psychologist Philippe Pinel examined the boy, declaring that his wildness was a fake and that he was an incurable idiot. He failed to explain how a mentally defective person could have been able to fend for himself in the wilds for any length of time.

Victor and Itard

Victor was assigned to Dr. Itard, who describes the boy’s behavior and his own efforts to teach him to do the things ordinary human beings do, including speaking and reading.

Victor’s tutor tells us that his senses were extraordinarily apathetic. His nostrils were filled with snuff without making him sneeze. He picked up potatoes from boiling water. A pistol fired near him provoked hardly any response, though the sounds of cracking a walnut caused him to turn around.

Itard tried to teach Victor to speak and read. At the end of five years, Victor could identify some written words and phrases referring to objects and actions, and even some words referring to simple relationships such as big and small, and he could use word cards to indicate some of his desires. However, he did not learn to speak.

More stories of feral children

There are many other stories of feral children in the literature, among others, the story of a boy who lived in Syria, who ate grass and could leap like an antelope, as well as of a girl who lived in the forests in Indonesia for six years after she had fallen into the river. She walked like an ape, and her teeth were as sharp as a razor.

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The Wild Boy of Aveyron

Nonfiction | Biography | Adult | Published in 1976

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A Special Case of Philosophical Reflection about the Origin of language: Victor, the Wild Child of Aveyron

The paper focuses on the analysis of Jean Itard's writings documenting the program of linguistic re-education of Victor de l'Aveyron, a wild child found in France at the end of the eighteenth century. When discovered, the boy was seemingly twelve or thirteen years old and suffered from a severe form of deficiency in his intellectual and linguistic development, which made him utterly unable to speak and communicate with others. Itard's original method of re-education is examined here in relation to both the positive results he achieved from a cognitive point of view (but also the negative ones from the point of view of the ontogenetic birth of language) and the most significant outcomes reached by the eighteenth century philosophy of language through Locke's and Condillac's semiotic theories.

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In the famous short story The egg and chicken of the Ukrainian writer Clarice Lispector, the author resumes that classic question that has been going through the history of humanity about who was born first; the egg or the chicken? In an analogous way we could also question the emergence of evil in humanity presenting two possibilities, namely: is language or society responsible for the birth of evil? We know that from the perspective of the philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau humanity is taken by the antagonism between nature and culture and this is the result of the process of degeneration of that through the inevitable process of perfectibility, continuously and without return causing the fall and moral degradation of the human being. However, unlike what some may think, it was not the needs that took men out of the state of nature, but passions, which can be represented by singing, dancing and sensual gesture, that is, language. For Rousseau, the spoken language is not something n...

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Abstract Frank Thomas Sautter: In the present paper, I raise some questions referring to Chateaubriand's discussion of the nature of language, its origin, its development and its functions in human life. These questions arise when his view is compared with the partly similar views defended by Gödel and Jørgensen, among others. Abstract response: Frank Sautter’s questions are directed at the precise senses of the words ‘invention’ and ‘creation’ used in my remarks on the origin of language, and at the connection between Jørgensen’s and my views on the development of language. In my response I clarify my use of the words ‘invention’ and ‘creation’ vis-à-vis Frank’s suggested interpretations, and examine Jørgensen’s distinction of stages in the development of language in relation to imperatives and the “directive use of language”.

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The Story of Genie Wiley

What her tragic story revealed about language and development

Kendra Cherry, MS, is a psychosocial rehabilitation specialist, psychology educator, and author of the "Everything Psychology Book."

Rachel Goldman, PhD FTOS, is a licensed psychologist, clinical assistant professor, speaker, wellness expert specializing in eating behaviors, stress management, and health behavior change.

Emily is a board-certified science editor who has worked with top digital publishing brands like Voices for Biodiversity, Study.com, GoodTherapy, Vox, and Verywell.

Who Was Genie Wiley?

Why was the genie wiley case so famous, did genie learn to speak, ethical concerns.

While there have been a number of cases of feral children raised in social isolation with little or no human contact, few have captured public and scientific attention, like that of Genie Wiley.

Genie spent almost her entire childhood locked in a bedroom, isolated, and abused for over a decade. Her case was one of the first to put the critical period theory to the test. Could a child reared in utter deprivation and isolation develop language? Could a nurturing environment make up for a horrifying past?

In order to understand Genie's story, it is important to look at what is known about her early life, the discovery of the abuse she had endured, and the subsequent efforts to treat and study her.

Early Life (1957-1970)

Genie's life prior to her discovery was one of utter deprivation. She spent most of her days tied naked to a potty chair, only able to move her hands and feet. When she made noise, her father would beat her. The rare times her father did interact with her, it was to bark or growl. Genie Wiley's brother, who was five years older than Genie, also suffered abuse under their father.

Discovery and Study (1970-1975)

Genie's story came to light on November 4, 1970, in Los Angeles, California. A social worker discovered the 13-year old girl after her mother sought out services for her own health. The social worker soon discovered that the girl had been confined to a small room, and an investigation by authorities quickly revealed that the child had spent most of her life in this room, often tied to a potty chair.

A Genie Wiley documentary was made in 1997 called "Secrets of the Wild Child." In it, Susan Curtiss, PhD, a linguist and researcher who worked with Genie, explained that the name Genie was used in case files to protect the girl's identity and privacy.

The case name is Genie. This is not the person's real name, but when we think about what a genie is, a genie is a creature that comes out of a bottle or whatever but emerges into human society past childhood. We assume that it really isn't a creature that had a human childhood.

Both parents were charged with abuse , but Genie's father died by suicide the day before he was due to appear in court, leaving behind a note stating that "the world will never understand."

The story of Genie's case soon spread, drawing attention from both the public and the scientific community. The case was important, said psycholinguist and author Harlan Lane, PhD, because "our morality doesn’t allow us to conduct deprivation experiments with human beings; these unfortunate people are all we have to go on."

With so much interest in her case, the question became what should be done to help her. A team of psychologists and language experts began the process of rehabilitating Genie.

The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) provided funding for scientific research on Genie’s case. Psychologist David Rigler, PhD, was part of the "Genie team" and he explained the process.

I think everybody who came in contact with her was attracted to her. She had a quality of somehow connecting with people, which developed more and more but was present, really, from the start. She had a way of reaching out without saying anything, but just somehow by the kind of look in her eyes, and people wanted to do things for her.

Genie's rehabilitation team also included graduate student Susan Curtiss and psychologist James Kent. Upon her initial arrival at UCLA, Genie weighed just 59 pounds and moved with a strange "bunny walk." She often spat and was unable to straighten her arms and legs. Silent, incontinent, and unable to chew, she initially seemed only able to recognize her own name and the word "sorry."

After assessing Genie's emotional and cognitive abilities, Kent described her as "the most profoundly damaged child I've ever seen … Genie's life is a wasteland." Her silence and inability to use language made it difficult to assess her mental abilities, but on tests, she scored at about the level of a 1-year-old.

Genie Wiley's Rehabilitation and the Forbidden Experiment

She soon began to rapidly progress in specific areas, quickly learning how to use the toilet and dress herself. Over the next few months, she began to experience more developmental progress but remained poor in areas such as language. She enjoyed going out on day trips outside of the hospital and explored her new environment with an intensity that amazed her caregivers and strangers alike.

Curtiss suggested that Genie had a strong ability to communicate nonverbally , often receiving gifts from total strangers who seemed to understand the young girl's powerful need to explore the world around her.

Psychiatrist Jay Shurley, MD, helped assess Genie after she was first discovered, and he noted that since situations like hers were so rare, she quickly became the center of a battle between the researchers involved in her case. Arguments over the research and the course of her treatment soon erupted. Genie occasionally spent the night at the home of Jean Butler, one of her teachers.

After an outbreak of measles, Genie was quarantined at her teacher's home. Butler soon became protective and began restricting access to Genie. Other members of the team felt that Butler's goal was to become famous from the case, at one point claiming that Butler had called herself the next Anne Sullivan, the teacher famous for helping Helen Keller learn to communicate.  

Genie was partially treated like an asset and an opportunity for recognition, significantly interfering with their roles, and the researchers fought with each other for access to their perceived power source.

Eventually, Genie was removed from Butler's care and went to live in the home of psychologist David Rigler, where she remained for the next four years. Despite some difficulties, she appeared to do well in the Rigler household. She enjoyed listening to classical music on the piano and loved to draw, often finding it easier to communicate through drawing than through other methods.

After Genie was discovered, a group of researchers began the process of rehabilitation. However, this work also coincided with research to study her ability to acquire and use language. These two interests led to conflicts in her treatment and between the researchers and therapists working on her case.

State Custody (1975-Present)

NIMH withdrew funding in 1974, due to the lack of scientific findings. Linguist Susan Curtiss had found that while Genie could use words, she could not produce grammar. She could not arrange these words in a meaningful way, supporting the idea of a critical period in language development.

Rigler's research was disorganized and largely anecdotal. Without funds to continue the research and care for Genie, she was moved from the Riglers' care.

In 1975, Genie returned to live with her birth mother. When her mother found the task too difficult, Genie was moved through a series of foster homes, where she was often subjected to further abuse and neglect .

Genie’s situation continued to worsen. After spending a significant amount of time in foster homes, she returned to Children’s Hospital. Unfortunately, the progress that had occurred during her first stay had been severely compromised by the subsequent treatment she received in foster care. Genie was afraid to open her mouth and had regressed back into silence.

Genie’s birth mother then sued the Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles and the research team, charging them with excessive testing. While the lawsuit was eventually settled, it raised important questions about the treatment and care of Genie. Did the research interfere with the girl's therapeutic treatment?

Psychiatrist Jay Shurley visited her on her 27th and 29th birthdays and characterized her as largely silent, depressed , and chronically institutionalized. Little is known about Genie's present condition, although an anonymous individual hired a private investigator to track her down in 2000 and described her as happy. But this contrasts with other reports.

Genie Wiley Today

Today, Genie Wiley's whereabouts are unknown; though, if she is still living, she is presumed to be a ward of the state of California, living in an adult care home. As of 2024, Genie would be 66-67 years old.

Part of the reason why Genie's case fascinated psychologists and linguists so deeply was that it presented a unique opportunity to study a hotly contested debate about language development.

Essentially, it boils down to the age-old nature versus nurture debate. Does genetics or environment play a greater role in the development of language?

Nativists believe that the capacity for language is innate, while empiricists suggest that environmental variables play a key role. Nativist Noam Chomsky suggested that acquiring language could not be fully explained by learning alone.

Instead, Chomsky proposed that children are born with a language acquisition device (LAD), an innate ability to understand the principles of language. Once exposed to language, the LAD allows children to learn the language at a remarkable pace.

Critical Periods

Linguist Eric Lenneberg suggests that like many other human behaviors, the ability to acquire language is subject to critical periods. A critical period is a limited span of time during which an organism is sensitive to external stimuli and capable of acquiring certain skills.

According to Lenneberg, the critical period for language acquisition lasts until around age 12. After the onset of puberty, he argued, the organization of the brain becomes set and no longer able to learn and use language in a fully functional manner.

Genie's case presented researchers with a unique opportunity. If given an enriched learning environment, could she overcome her deprived childhood and learn language even though she had missed the critical period?

If Genie could learn language, it would suggest that the critical period hypothesis of language development was wrong. If she could not, it would indicate that Lenneberg's theory was correct.

Despite scoring at the level of a 1-year-old upon her initial assessment, Genie quickly began adding new words to her vocabulary. She started by learning single words and eventually began putting two words together much the way young children do. Curtiss began to feel that Genie would be fully capable of acquiring language.

After a year of treatment, Genie started putting three words together occasionally. In children going through normal language development, this stage is followed by what is known as a language explosion. Children rapidly acquire new words and begin putting them together in novel ways.

Unfortunately, this never happened for Genie. Her language abilities remained stuck at this stage and she appeared unable to apply grammatical rules and use language in a meaningful way. At this point, her progress leveled off and her acquisition of new language halted.

While Genie was able to learn some language after puberty, her inability to use grammar (which Chomsky suggests is what separates human language from animal communication) offers evidence for the critical period hypothesis.

Of course, Genie's case is not so simple. Not only did she miss the critical period for learning language, but she was also horrifically abused. She was malnourished and deprived of cognitive stimulation for most of her childhood.

Researchers were also never able to fully determine if Genie had any pre-existing cognitive deficits. As an infant, a pediatrician had identified her as having some type of mental delay. So researchers were left to wonder whether Genie had experienced cognitive deficits caused by her years of abuse or if she had been born with some degree of intellectual disability.

There are many ethical concerns surrounding Genie's story. Arguments among those in charge of Genie's care and rehabilitation reflect some of these concerns.

"If you want to do rigorous science, then Genie's interests are going to come second some of the time. If you only care about helping Genie, then you wouldn't do a lot of the scientific research," suggested psycholinguist Harlan Lane in the NOVA documentary focused on her life.

In Genie's case, some of the researchers held multiple roles of caretaker-teacher-researcher-housemate. which, by modern standards, we would deem unethical. For example, the Riglers benefitted financially by taking Genie in (David received a large grant and was released from certain duties at the children's hospital without loss of pay). Butler also played a role in removing Genie from the Riglers' home, filing multiple complaints against him.

While Genie's story may be studied for its implications in our understanding of language acquisition and development, it is also a case that will continue to be studied over its serious ethical issues.

"I think future generations are going to study Genie's case not only for what it can teach us about human development but also for what it can teach us about the rewards and the risks of conducting 'the forbidden experiment,'" Lane explained.

Bottom Line

Genie Wiley's story perhaps leaves us with more questions than answers. Though it was difficult for Genie to learn language, she was able to communicate through body language, music, and art once she was in a safe home environment. Unfortunately, we don't know what her progress could have been had adequate care not been taken away from her.

Ultimately, her case is so important for the psychology and research field because we must learn from this experience not to revictimize and exploit the very people we set out to help. This is an important lesson because Genie's original abuse by her parents was perpetuated by the neglect and abandonment she faced later in her life. We must always strive to maintain objectivity and consider the best interest of the subject before our own.

Frequently Asked Questions

Genie, now in her 60s, is believed to be living in an adult care facility in California. Efforts by journalists to learn more about her location and current condition have been rejected by authorities due to confidentiality rules. Curtiss has also reported attempting to contact Genie without success.

Along with her husband, Irene Wiley was charged with abuse, but these charges were eventually dropped. Irene was blind and reportedly mentally ill, so it is believed that Genie's father was the child's primary caretaker. Genie's father, Clark Wiley, also abused his wife and other children. Two of the couple's children died in infancy under suspicious circumstances.

Genie's story suggests that the acquisition of language has a critical period of development. Her case is complex, however, since it is unclear if her language deficits were due to deprivation or if there was an underlying mental disability that played a role. The severe abuse she experienced may have also affected her mental development and language acquisition.

Collection of research materials related to linguistic-psychological studies of Genie (pseudonym) (collection 800) . UCLA Library Special Collections, Charles E. Young Research Library, University of California, Los Angeles.

Schoneberger T. Three myths from the language acquisition literature . Anal Verbal Behav. 2010;26(1):107–131. doi:10.1007/bf03393086

APA Dictionary of Psychology. Language acquisition device . American Psychological Association.

Vanhove J. The critical period hypothesis in second language acquisition: A statistical critique and a reanalysis .  PLoS One . 2013;8(7):e69172. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0069172

Carroll R. Starved, tortured, forgotten: Genie, the feral child who left a mark on researchers . The Guardian .

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Rymer R. Genie: A Scientific Tragedy.  Harper-Collins.

By Kendra Cherry, MSEd Kendra Cherry, MS, is a psychosocial rehabilitation specialist, psychology educator, and author of the "Everything Psychology Book."

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In This Article Expand or collapse the "in this article" section Feral and "Wild" Children

Introduction, general overviews.

• The Wild Child and the Wild Man
• Natural History and Anthropology
• The Arabic Influence
• Major European Philosophical Texts
• Secondary Reading on the Feral Child in Enlightenment Philosophy
• Early Cases
• Peter the Wild Boy
• The Savage Girl of Champagne
• The Wild Boy of Aveyron
• Kaspar Hauser
• Indian Cases
• Genie and the “Feral Child” in Recent Linguistic Study
• Connections to Autism and “Feral Child” Syndrome

Related Articles Expand or collapse the "related articles" section about

About related articles close popup.

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• Females and Autism
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• Pedagogic Theories
• Socialization and Parent-Child Dynamics
• Street Children And Brazil
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Feral and "Wild" Children by Michael Newton LAST REVIEWED: 28 May 2013 LAST MODIFIED: 28 May 2013 DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199791231-0140

The term feral children has been taken as applying to those who have endured three very different kinds of childhood experience. In one case, the term covers “children of nature,” that is, those who have lived in a solitary state in the countryside. Closely related to such individuals are those children who have been reared for a while by animals, most notably wolves or bears, though there are also tales of children suckled by gazelle, pigs, sheep, cows, and so on. Yet, the phrase has also been applied to children who have been confined to long periods of isolation within human society, locked up in rooms or dungeons. The common denominator in these tales is the experience of an absolute solitude, the absence of caring human parents, and, very often, the deprivation of language that results from that solitude. As such, for centuries these children have been an object of fascination to philosophers interested in human development, the inception of the political realm, and the origin of language. In more recent times, they have been the subject of study by linguists, anthropologists, and sociologists. Whether “wild children” have truly existed is a matter of some interest; more important here is what they stand for, the ideas and philosophies they evoke, and the fantasies that their supposed existence nurtures. Outside the English-speaking world, the idea of feral children is especially important in French- and German-language texts. However, this bibliography limits itself to sources in English, including translations of Arabic, Latin, French, and German works. Feral children have been central to a number of literary works, from William Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale (1610–1611) to Thomas Day’s The History of Little Jack (1788), and from Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Books (1895–1896) to Edgar Rice Burroughs’s Tarzan of the Apes (1914). Authors have in several instances turned true stories of feral children into fiction, as with Jakob Wassermann’s Caspar Hauser (1908), Catherine Mary Tennant’s Peter the Wild Boy (1939), and Jill Dawson’s novel based on the Wild Boy of Aveyron, Wild Boy (2003). Similarly, several excellent films have been produced on the subject, such as François Truffaut’s L’Enfant sauvage (1970), Werner Herzog’s Jeder für sich und Gott gegen alle (1974), and a number of other successful works, such as Michael Apted’s Nell (1994) or even the Disney-animated classic, The Jungle Book (Wolfgang Reitherman 1967). It is beyond the scope of this bibliography to make full mention of these works; however, it is clear that they demonstrate that a fascination with feral children goes beyond the limits of academic discourse.

Several books offer an overview of the feral child phenomenon. Those that do take one of three approaches: the psychological ( Candland 1993 ), the philosophical ( Malson 1972 ), or the cultural historical (such as Benzaquén 2006 and Douthwaite 2002 ). Some works, such as Abello 1970 , are concerned with the veracity of such stories; others attempt to use the feral child as an element in an argument concerning human nature. Singh and Zingg 1942 and Newton 2002 provide an overview of the major case histories; in particular, the author of Newton 2002 is intrigued by the relationships between “feral children” and their educators. Kidd 2005 explores how, in America beginning in the late 19th century, the idea of the feral child influenced ideas of development for boys in general.

Abello, V. B. “Wolf Children: Truth or Fallacy?” Clinical Pediatrics 9.7 (July 1970): 425–429.

DOI: 10.1177/000992287000900713

Abello lists the major case histories of children being reared apparently by wild animals and comes to the conclusion that such stories are mostly dubious, the children more likely being damaged by “idiocy or congenital feeblemindedness” (p. 429).

Benzaquén, Adriana S. Encounters with Wild Children: Temptation and Disappointment in the Study of Human Nature . Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2006.

A wide-ranging, admirably well-researched, and thought-provoking book that sets out to account for the fascination wrought by “wild children” (she questions the existence of the category itself) as well as considering their place in cultural debates and practices.

Candland, Douglas Keith. Feral Children and Clever Animals . New York: Oxford University Press, 1993.

From a clinical psychologist’s standpoint, this is perhaps the best introduction to the scientific approach to such children. It breaks down distinctions between human beings and other animals by exploring examples, including the Wild Boy of Aveyron, Kaspar Hauser, and Kamala and Amala as well as the case histories of animals who have been taught to speak, such as “Clever Hans,” a horse, or Koko, a gorilla.

Douthwaite, Julia. The Wild Girl, Natural Man and the Monster: Dangerous Experiments in the Age of Enlightenment . Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002.

DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226160573.001.0001

This work concentrates on 18th-century accounts, notably that of the Savage Girl of Champagne, exploring ideas of gender and scenarios of domination and resistance in relation to feral children.

Kidd, Kenneth. Making American Boys: Boyology and the Feral Tale . Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005.

Taking the United States from the late 19th century to the present day, Kidd shows the importance of feral children stories to the understanding of boyhood development and to social practices designed to foster that development.

Malson, Lucien. Wolf Children . Translated by Edmund Fawcett, Peter Ayrton, and Joan White. London: NLB, 1972.

Malson presents a reading of feral children, which argues that human beings have no nature since human nature can appear only in the artificial context of society. Malson also makes use of Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s idea that without language the feral child would be unable to form a sense of self, since speech symbolizes and enacts a condition of reciprocity. Originally published in 1964.

Newton, Michael. Savage Girls and Wild Boys: A History of Feral Children . London: Faber and Faber, 2002.

This book offers a biographical and cultural-historical exploration of the cases of Peter the Wild Boy, Memmie Le Blanc (some may think that several of his conclusions are questionable based on the research of Serges Aroules), the Wild Boy of Aveyron, Kaspar Hauser, Kamala and Amala, and Genie, and, more briefly, Ivan Mishukov and John Ssabunnya.

Singh, J. A. L., and Robert Mowry Zingg. Wolf-Children and Feral Man . New York: Archon, 1942.

The first part of this book consists of Singh’s account of Kamala and Amala (see Indian Cases ). The second part consists of Zingg’s “Feral Man and Cases of Extreme Isolation,” a work that discusses, in some detail, all the major cases of feral children up to the date of publication. Zingg’s credulity in believing such stories led to his dismissal from his post at the University of Denver.

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