Analysis Of Secret Of The Wild Child: The Revealing Story Of Genie

Doctors Judge Isolated Girl Able to Learn In Arab folklore, a genie is a spirit imprisoned in a bottle or oil lamp who, when freed, can grant wishes. In the late 1960’s, “critical period hypothesis” was a theory of some debate. According to Eric Lenneberg, a neuropsychologist and linguist Noam Chomsky, if human speech was genetic and if not learned by adolescence it would be lost forever. Nova’s Emmy winning documentary, Secret of the Wild Child; The Revealing Story of Genie, begins in 1970 when Walter Cronkite reports: “Officials in the Los Angeles suburb of Arcadia have taken custody of a thirteen-year-old girl they say was kept in such isolation by her parents that she never even learned to talk. Her elderly parents have been charged

After becoming a ward of the state, the Genie was moved to Los Angeles Children Hospital and with so much interest in her case, the question became what should be done with her. Pedestrians’, psychologist, linguists and other experts, petitioned the National Institute of Mental Health funded scientific research project to study her case. Susan Curtiss was a new graduate student interested in language acquisition and said she was “literally at the right place at the right time.” Years later lecturing about her experience on Susan Wiley, she said “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” James Kent, her psychologist said: “I was captivated by her. I was not the last person to become captivated by her. The story, as we began to learn about it, was sort of one of the things, of course, that would reach out and grab you anyway. But she had a personal quality that seemed to

Butler became obsessed with making a name for herself, and told colleagues she wanted to be the next Annie Sullivan -the so-called "miracle worker" who taught language to the blind and deaf Helen Keller. Butler wrote she feared Genie was being experimented with too much and attempted to keep away other team members and applied to be Genie’s foster parent. Howard Hansen, a member of the management team said: “We were not satisfied with the quality of the care that Genie was able—had at Jean Butler's. So, that had to be interrupted. And again, it was up to management, i.e., us, to interrupt that.” Partly on advice from Children's Hospital, Jean Butler’s application was rejected. Genie returned to Children's Hospital for only a couple of hours. A new foster parent came to take her home. David Rigler took over James Kent’s role as therapist and also be Genie's foster parent and the principal investigator. Rigler said “Ordinarily, mental health people are not involved in these kinds of multiple roles, but I have to stress how desperate we were to find a place that was appropriate, and I remember making the commitment, in my mind, for a three-month period, which obviously got extended much longer. She was with us approximately four years.” Rigler’s wife Marilyn, a graduate student in human development, was very excited as Genie’s new