Feral Cases
Man, the Prince of animated beings, who is a miracle of Nature, and for whom all things on this earth were created, is a mimic animal ... (Carl von Linnus, 1792, p. 51).
Let us try to understand “Man as a social being.” “Man as a social being” emphasizes the inherent social nature of humans. This concept underscores that humans are naturally inclined to form connections and engage in social interactions. Human societies are built upon interdependence, communication, and shared cultural principles. We rely on one another for support, security, and exchanging ideas and services. Our ability to communicate complex thoughts and emotions through language facilitates social bonding and knowledge-sharing. Within societies, cultural norms and institutions guide behaviour, fostering social order and cohesion. Humans form groups from families to communities to fulfill various needs and desires. These social interactions encompass cooperation, conflict, and identity formation. Socialization, especially during childhood, instills societal values and norms. Adaptability to diverse social environments is a hallmark of our species, contributing to the resilience and dynamism of human societies. In essence, humans thrive through their social connections and interactions, and recognizing this social dimension is essential for understanding human culture, behaviour, and society.
Let us put forth and try to understand who are feral children? Feral children, often called “wild children,” are individuals, typically children, who have grown up with minimal or no human contact and have had limited exposure to human society and culture during their formative years. These children are sometimes isolated from human communities, raised by animals, or left to fend for themselves in the wild.
Feral children provide unique insights into the nature vs. nurture debate because they grow up without the typical socialization and cultural influences that shape human behaviour. Due to their lack of human interaction, feral children often exhibit unique behaviours, limited language skills, and difficulties in adapting to human society when discovered and reintegrated into it.
Now let us understand the feral cases on the following –
Let us study three of these cases which have been studied carefully, which are cited from Maclver and Page (1959, pp. 44-45) can be cited.
Case 1 - Kaspar Hauser:
The famous case of Kaspar Hauser is peculiarly significant because this ill-starred youth was in all probability bereft of human contacts through political machinations and therefore his condition when found could not be attributed to a defect of innate mentality. When Hauser at the age of seventeen wandered into the city of Nuremberg in 1828 he could hardly walk, had the mind of an infant, and could mutter only a meaningless phrase or two. Sociologically it is noteworthy that Kaspar mistook inanimate objects for living beings. And when he was killed five years later a post-mortem revealed the brain development to be subnormal. The denial of society to Kaspar Hauser was a denial to him also of human nature itself.
Case 2 - Amla and Kamala:
One of the most interesting of the feral cases involves two Hindu children who at the ages respectively of about eight and under two, in 1920, were discovered in a wolf den. The younger child died within a few months of discovery, but the elder, Kamala, as she became named, survived until 1929, and her history in human society has been carefully recorded. Kamala brought with her almost none of the traits that we associate with human behaviour. She could walk only on all fours, possessed no language save wolflike growls, and was as shy of humans as was any other undomesticated animal. Only as the result of the most careful and apparently sympathetic training was she taught rudimentary social habits before her death, she had slowly learned some simple speech, human eating and dressing habits, and the like. This wolf child’s “sense of human selfhood, utterly lacking when she was first found, gradually emerged. But the emergence of individuality was altogether dependent upon her membership in human society.”
Case 3 - Anna:
More recently, sociologists and psychologists have studied the case of Anna, an illegitimate American child who had been placed in a room at the age of six months and isolated there until her discovery five years later in 1938. During her confinement, Anna was fed little else than milk, received no ordinary training, and had almost no contacts with other beings. This extreme and cruel social isolation, which provides the scientist one more “laboratory” case, left the child with few of the attributes of the normal five-year-old. When Anna was discovered she could not walk or speak, she was completely apathetic, and indifferent to people around her. As in the case of Kamala, Anna responded to the careful treatment provided after her release, and perhaps because of her younger age and the limited contacts she had experienced while a prisoner she became “humanized” much more rapidly before she died in 1942. Anna’s case illustrates once again that human nature develops in man only when he is social man, only when he is one of many men sharing a common life.
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