Genie’s story It is one of the best examples of how far human cruelty can go.
We are going to delve into the story of the life of this American girl and what were the implications that her tragic case had for different psychology studies that otherwise could never have taken place.
Genie: a summary of his case of isolation since childhood
Little Genie (name later assigned by a doctor who treated her) He was born in the city of Arcadia, state of California (USA) in 1957 Her father was Clark, a man with severe depression caused by the death of his mother in a car accident many years before. Her mother was Irene, a woman 20 years younger than Clark, who suffered from constant physical abuse by her husband. Genie also had an older brother, John. There were two other births before Genie, but they did not survive.
Genie did not speak her first words until she was almost two years old. She was evaluated by a doctor who concluded that perhaps the girl had an intellectual disability. This event marked a turning point in Genie’s life, because from this moment, her father, Clark, would decide that she could not risk her daughter suffering the dangers of the outside world and took the drastic and cruel decision of isolating the girl in a room, depriving her of practically all stimuli.
From then on, until the age of 13, Genie spent every day of her life locked in a room , chained to a chair that had a urinal attached to it. To sleep, he forced her to enter a cage, only equipped with a kind of sleeping bag. To make matters worse, Clark did not allow Genie to speak or make any sound, under penalty of hitting her or pretending to make wild animal noises to scare her. Genie’s stimulation, therefore, was reduced to almost zero, at all levels.
Regarding food, Genie was equally deprived. Their entire maintenance throughout those infernal years consisted of a kind of cereal porridge for children, sometimes accompanied by a boiled egg. Furthermore, she was always fed directly into her mouth, so she didn’t even learn to fend for herself in that regard. The only person in and out of Genie’s room was her father because he did not allow anyone else to enter, not even his mother or his brother.
The only objects that he was able to have inside the room were old television guides from which Clark had previously cut out the photos, waterproof clothing, or some food containers. Communication with her was limited to short and authoritative phrases, such as “enough”, “stop” or “no”. It is not surprising that, when the case came to light and Genie was 13 years old, she was only able to understand about 20 words, since she had never been taught the language in a conventional way.
Although the total isolation was only for Genie, The rest of their families did not enjoy wide freedom either Clark did not allow the usual exits from the home, and he did not even allow them to speak in a loud tone, so Genie never listened to them (they were prohibited from direct communication, obviously). Clark’s psychological submission to his family was such that he would sometimes take his gun, with the magazine attached, 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, and took John and Genie with her Irene had no financial means to survive, and she was practically blind. Looking for a way out, she approached a charity office in Temple City. The woman who served them quickly focused her attention on Genie and her peculiar behavior, which clashed with what could be expected from a creature of her age.
It seemed to him that Genie might be a girl with autism. He made unintelligible noises, had a lost gaze, and maintained a strange postural behavior , making it seem like he was holding on to bars that weren’t 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 person in charge of the office, 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 shocking case, and began her treatment and studies of her behavior and speech.
Later years
The State of California social services assumed the cost of the treatments Genie needed to achieve the learning she should have experienced in her early years and of which she was deprived by her father’s actions. This way,The girl began therapy that allowed her to improve her language, allowing her to learn new words and build short sentences but it never reached the level that would correspond to a person without sensory deprivation.
However, after 4 years of treatments, the budget with which these therapies were maintained was closed, so Genie stopped receiving this help. For this reason, it is not known the scope that the treatment could have had and the improvements that the little girl could have experienced if there had not been that time limit that came upon them and that prevented them from completing the original plan they had to help Genie.
Furthermore, after a series of trials, her biological mother regained custody, but she really took care of her for a very short time, so Genie began a painful pilgrimage through a series of shelters that meant regressions to her initial state. In some of these places, Genie was mistreated again, an ordeal that explains why the girl returned to the behaviors she carried out in her confinement. For example, He stopped pronouncing the learned phrases to never speak again
To this day, there is hardly any information about how the following years passed in Genie’s life. For privacy, the only thing that is known is that she spends her days in an adult center in Los Angeles, and that her mother has already passed away.
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 carried out in this regard to evaluate the effects that sensory deprivation in childhood had caused to this girl, an experiment that, logically, any ethics committee would have prohibited from carrying out but which, on this occasion, had unfortunately occurred under 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 enormous amounts of studies. This occasion was an opportunity to check 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 managed to get Genie to learn the grammar and vocabulary corresponding to a 3 or 4 year old child, but they couldn’t go any further.
At the level of impulse control, Genie had anger attacks in which he did not vocalize (because she hadn’t been allowed to as a child), but she hit objects and the floor, or scratched her face. Furthermore, she did not have any type of sexual inhibition, and routinely initiated masturbatory behaviors no matter where she was or who was present at the time. In fact, she often tried to get others to participate in that activity.
Not having enjoyed normal mobility throughout his early years had caused both his arms and legs to have atrophy, and it was not possible for him to walk normally , so on many occasions he used quadrupedity to move through spaces. Likewise, he had no control over his sphincter. Used to wearing diapers, she urinated and defecated on any occasion, without any voluntariness about it.
With many difficulties, the specialists managed to teach him some tasks, such as dressing himself without needing outside help. However, upon discontinuing the treatments, these teachings could not continue and there is no telling how far Genie would have gone in his recovery. But The line between altruistic help and mere experimentation was very blurred and that was the trigger for interrupting the program and for the little girl to become totally anonymous.
