Genie: the story of a child isolated from birth

A summary of the case of Genie, a child locked up for years, which altered her mental development.

Genie's story is one of the best examples of how far human cruelty can go.

We will delve into the story of the life of this American girl and what were the implications that her tragic case meant for different psychology studies that otherwise could never have taken place.

Genie: a summary of her case of isolation since childhood

Little Genie (a name later assigned to her by a doctor who treated her) was born in the city of Arcadia, California (USA) in 1957.. Her father was Clark, a man with a severe depression caused by the death of her mother in a car accident many years before. Her mother was Irene, a woman 20 years Clark's junior, who suffered constant physical abuse from her husband. Genie also had an older brother, John. There were two other births before Genie, but they did not survive.

Genie did not utter her first words until she was almost two years old. She was evaluated by a doctor who concluded that she may have an intellectual disability. This marked a turning point in Genie's life, for from this point on, her father, Clark, decided that he could not risk his daughter suffering the dangers of the outside world.and took the drastic and cruel decision to isolate the girl in a room, depriving her of practically all stimuli.

From then until she was 13 years old, Genie spent every day of her life locked in a room, chained to a chair which she was to be kept in until the age of 13.chained to a chair with a bedpan attached. To sleep, he forced her into a cage, equipped only with a kind of sleeping bag. To make matters worse, Clark would not allow Genie to speak or make any sound, under penalty of hitting her or faking wild animal noises to scare her. Genie's stimulation, therefore, was reduced to almost zero, at all levels.

With regard to food, Genie was similarly deprived. Her entire sustenance throughout those hellish years consisted of a kind of infant cereal porridge, sometimes accompanied by a boiled egg. Moreover, she was always fed directly into her mouth, so she did not even learn to fend for herself in that regard. The only person who went in and out of Genie's room was her father, as he did not allow anyone else to enter her room.She would not allow anyone else in, not even her mother or brother.

The only objects she was allowed to keep in the room were old TV guides from which Clark had previously cut out the pictures, waterproof clothing, or some food containers. Communication with her was limited to short, authoritative phrases, such as "stop", "stop", or "no". Not surprisingly, when the case came to light and Genie was 13 years old, she was only able to understand about 20 words, as she had never been taught the language in a conventional way.

Although total isolation was only for Genie, the rest of his families did not enjoy wide latitude either.. Clark did not allow the usual outings from the home, and did not even let them speak in a high tone, so Genie never listened to them (direct communication was obviously forbidden). Clark's psychological subjugation towards his family was such that he would sometimes pick up his gun, with the magazine in it, and simply look at them, in a challenging attitude.

Discovery of the Genie case

It is not clear how it happened, but in 1970, Irene fled the hell that was that house, taking John and Genie with her.. Irene had no means of support and was practically blind. Looking for a way out, she went to a welfare office in Temple City. The woman who served them quickly fixed her attention on Genie and her peculiar behavior, which clashed with what might be expected of a creature of her age.

It seemed to her that Genie might be a child with autism. She was making unintelligible noises, had a blank stare, and maintained a strange postural demeanor, seeming to clutch her head and face.She seemed to be holding on to bars that were not really there. Her physical appearance resembled that of a 6- or 7-year-old girl, although she was wearing diapers. However, when the social worker discovered that she was actually 13 years old, she did not hesitate to contact the office manager, who in turn called the police.

The state immediately took custody of Genie, and both Irene and, of course, Clark, were charged with gross neglect and continued child abuse. It was at this point that the world learned of Genie's harrowing case, and her treatment and studies of her behavior and language began.

Later years

The social services of the State of California assumed the cost of the treatments Genie needed to achieve the learning she should have experienced in her early years and was deprived of by her father's actions. Thus,the girl started a therapy that allowed her to improve her language, enabling her to learn new words and to build short sentences, but she never reached the level that would correspond to a person without sensory deprivation.but she never reached the level that would correspond to a person without sensory deprivation.

However, after 4 years of treatments, the budget that supported these therapies was closed, so Genie stopped receiving this help. For this reason, it is not known the extent to which the treatment could have had and the improvements that the little girl could have experienced if there had not been this time limit that came about and prevented them from completing the original plan they had to help Genie.

In addition, after a series of lawsuits, her Biological mother regained custody, but really only took care of her for a very short time, so Genie began a painful pilgrimage through a series of foster care centers that meant regressions to her initial state. In some of these places Genie was again abused, an ordeal that explains why the girl returned to the behaviors she displayed in her confinement. For example, she stopped uttering the phrases she had learned, never to speak again..

To this day, there is little information about how the following years of Genie's life unfolded. For privacy, all that is known is that she spends her days in an adult facility in Los Angeles, and that her mother is deceased.

Psychological studies

Genie's story is an absolute human drama, and it is a situation that should not have happened in any way. However, once her case was discovered, a series of psychological investigations were conducted to assess the effects that childhood sensory deprivation had had on her. to this girl, an experiment that, logically, any ethical committee would have forbidden to carry out but which, on this occasion, unfortunately had occurred in real conditions.

What psychologists wondered was which part of human behavior is given by genetics and which by the environment in which they have been raised, a dichotomy that has generated huge amounts of studies. This occasion was an opportunity to test some of these questions. For example, they tried to find out whether language was an innate or learned ability. With a lot of effort they were able to get Genie to learn the grammar and vocabulary of a 3- or 4-year-old, but they could go no further.

At the level of impulse control, Genie had fits of anger in which she would not vocalize (because she had not been allowed to as a child), but would hit objects and the floor, or scratch her face. In addition, he had no sexual inhibitions whatsoever, and would routinely initiate masturbatory behaviors regardless of where he was or who was present at the time. In fact, he often tried to engage others in this activity.

Not having enjoyed normal mobility throughout his early years had resulted in both arms and legs being atrophied, and he was unable to walk normally. was not able to walk normally, so that on many occasions he wasHe was unable to walk normally, so on many occasions he had to use quadrupedal mobility to move around spaces. Likewise, she had no control over her sphincters. Accustomed to wearing diapers, she urinated and defecated on any occasion, without any voluntary control.

With great difficulty, the specialists were able to teach her some tasks, such as dressing herself without outside help. However, when the treatments were discontinued, these teachings could not be continued and it is not possible to know how far Genie would have gone in her recovery. But the line between altruistic help and mere experimentation was very blurred, and that was the trigger for the program to be discontinued.and that was the trigger for discontinuing the program and for the little girl to pass into total anonymity.

Bibliographical references:

• Curtiss, S. (2014). Genie: a psycholinguistic study of a modern-day wild child. Perspectives in Neurolinguistics and Psycholinguistics. Academic Press Inc.
• Fromkin, V., Krashen, S., Curtiss, S., Rigler, D., Rigler, M. (1974). The development of language in Genie: a case of language acquisition beyond the "critical period". Brain and language. Elsevier.
• LaPointe, L.L. (2005). Feral children. Journal of medical speech-language pathology.