Our understanding of modern psychology is founded on the research and experiments of the past. However, not all experiments have met their goal of furthering our knowledge of the human mind.
In fact, some have done the opposite. They’ve highlighted how experimental methods can sometimes do more harm than good. Such experiments are best avoided for ethical and moral reasons. This is a short history of one such experiment, which gained so much notoriety over the years that it came to be called the “forbidden experiment.”
Why Is the Forbidden Experiment Forbidden?
In 1980, the American scholar Roger Shattuck published his book, “The Forbidden Experiment.” It was an investigation into the life of a boy named Victor of Aveyron, who lived in France in the 19th century.
Victor had no family or caretakers. He lived outside human civilization, making him a curiosity for the villagers of Aveyron.
As a feral child, Victor lived like a wild animal. He survived off stolen food from the peasants’ fields and huts. When the villagers attempted to catch him, they soon realized that Victor could not speak in French or any other language.
When he was finally captured in 1800, they sent him to Paris where he could be studied at an institution for deaf-mutes.
But Victor was neither deaf nor mute. His origins were a mystery, but it was clear the boy had grown up without any caretakers or teachers.
Doctors in Paris tried to teach him the ways of civilized society, but to no avail. Finally, one of the leading French physicians of the time, Jean Marc Gaspard Itard, decided to take responsibility for Victor’s instruction.
For six years, Itard attempted to teach Victor how to master speech, but even his efforts were in vain. When it was clear the boy would never be able to communicate beyond making basic signs and grunts, Victor was assigned to the care of a guardian in 1806.
Shattuck’s “The Forbidden Experiment” examined Victor’s story and the questions it raised in the fields of psychology, education, and mental development. Some of the most pressing questions in the book are still valid today.
For instance, what happens to a child without proper socialization? Or how do we acquire language skills as children? Is it even possible to educate a child without a language to instruct them in? The story of Victor of Aveyron shows that there are no easy answers to these questions.
In many ways, Victor was the perfect subject for research. He was completely unfamiliar with human contact and lacked even basic language skills. However, despite the sustained efforts of experts like Itard, the results were inconclusive.
The only conclusion Shattuck could draw from investigating Victor’s story was that there is no way to study a subject like Victor in a controlled setting.
To recreate the condition in which Victor was found, researchers would have to deprive the child of the very things that make us human: the ability to interact, learn, and share with others of our kind. That’s why Shattuck called the study of language deprivation in children “the forbidden experiment.”
Conducting the forbidden experiment means trampling on the human rights of its subjects. Children like Victor who lack complete social or language skills have been recorded in history, but this was rarely done. No matter how fascinating such a study might seem, the inherent cruelty justifies the fact that language deprivation should be a forbidden experiment.
The Grim Reality of Language Deprivation Experiments
Whenever a child like Victor comes along, they naturally become the focus of much scrutiny. Even in modern times and in developed countries, there have been several cases of children completely lacking in language skills. Sadly, many of these cases ended in a similar fashion.
For instance, Los Angeles authorities found a girl named Genie in 1970. She had been kept in isolation, restricted to a single room in her parents’ house.
Even though efforts were made to rehabilitate the 13-year-old, she was never able to master language, and was eventually consigned to the state’s foster care system.
Children like Victor and Genie highlight how important it is for a child to receive socialization and instruction. Depriving a child of these essential experiences is tantamount to abuse.
There is nothing that can justify artificially recreating the conditions for the forbidden experiment, not even the advancement of scientific knowledge. The cost of crossing ethical and moral boundaries is simply too high.
Also, our understanding of psychology has come a long way from the time when Victor of Aveyron was captured. Today, we know that the “nature versus nurture” debate in child psychology is unsound. Rather, it is a combination of both which leads to holistic development for children.
Rebecca Saxe, a Professor of Neuroscience at MIT, writes that “a social environment that includes other human beings is inevitably more natural for a human infant than any wholly artificial environment that could be constructed to replace it. Even the unfolding of innately determined human traits relies on a social environment.”
When the Forbidden Experiment Wasn’t Forbidden
Today, researchers are well aware of the ethical implications of the forbidden experiment. However, this is a modern development.
In the past, there were no such guardrails preventing inquiring minds from going to excessive lengths in the pursuit of what they believed was valuable knowledge.
Language deprivation studies have been conducted a surprising number of times in our history, and not just with naturally occurring subjects like Victor or Genie. There are at least four recorded instances of the forbidden experiment being conducted by royal decree.
Psamtik I
As far back as 600 BC, there was an interest in the possible outcomes of language deprivation experiments. The Greek scribe Herodotus recorded an attempt by the Egyptian pharaoh Psamtik I to deduce which language was older, Egyptian or Phrygian.
Psamtik I’s method was to pass two newborns into the care of a shepherd, who was instructed to never speak to them. The pharaoh believed the children would naturally develop language skills, and the tongue they spoke in would be the older one.
Herodotus does not provide too many details about Psamtik I’s experiment. We don’t know how long the shepherd cared for the children, or if they were able to live a normal life after being subjected to this unusual form of child-rearing. And while Psamtik I was able to find an answer to his question, its veracity remains dubious.
The pharaoh concluded that Phrygian, a tongue spoken in Anatolia, predated Egyptian. This was because the first word spoken by one of the two children was “becos,” the Phrygian word for bread. It is a shaky, unscientific way of interpreting the experiment since it’s more likely the pharaoh was simply misinterpreting a toddler’s babbling.
Frederik II
The Holy Roman Emperor Frederik II, who ruled during the 13th century, believed that humanity had a natural language. This would have been the language that God Himself granted unto mankind, the language that Adam and Eve spoke in the Garden of Eden.
At the time, religious doctrines and scientific knowledge were inextricably intertwined. So Frederik II, confident that man had been created in God’s image, thought that children raised without human interaction would naturally begin speaking this language.
Frederik II’s attempt at discovering this language is recorded by the Italian monk Salembene di Adam in his account “Cronica,” which means “The Chronicle.”
He writes that Frederik II thought that children had the capacity to naturally begin speaking Hebrew, Greek, or Latin, even without any adult to teach them.
Of course, the subjects of Frederik II’s language deprivation experiment did not possess any such innate language skills. The “Cronica” records that the children subjected to this experiment died due to a lack of care, revealing once again why the forbidden experiment should never be attempted.
James IV of Scotland
The Renaissance was a period that saw a renewed interest in arts and sciences across Europe. During this period, King James IV of Scotland, who was fluent in eight languages himself, ordered the forbidden experiment to be carried out. He sought to discover the roots of language in mankind.
James IV gave two newborn infants to a deaf-mute woman, and sent them to live on the uninhabited island of Inchkeith.
This experiment is recorded in the “Historie and Chronicles of Scotland,” written by the Scottish historian Robert Lindsay of Pitscottie a century after James IV’s reign.
His account states that the children grew up to speak perfect Hebrew. However, since there are no contemporary records of this occurring, it’s wise to take this account with a pinch of salt.
Akbar the Great
The Mughal Emperor Akbar the Great, who ruled over the Indian subcontinent in the 16th century, was famous for his curious intellect.
He sought to understand the ways the world worked, which led him to conduct his own version of the forbidden experiment.
Akbar believed that language was a learned behavior and not something innate. His language deprivation experiment sought to prove this thesis.
His pursuits have been recorded in many contemporary and later sources such as his official biography “Akbarnama” and other works like “Dabestan-e-Mazaheb” and “Montaḵab al-Tawārīḵ.”
On Akbar’s orders, 12 newborn children were entrusted to the care of mute nurses in a dwelling that came to be known as “The Palace of the Mute.” The children were raised there for several years.
At the end of a lengthy period, Akbar visited the palace and saw his language deprivation experiment had yielded the predicted result: With no-one to teach them language skills, the children had grown up to be as mute as their nurses.
Every recorded instance of the forbidden experiment has negatively affected the development of its subjects, demonstrating that the experiment is forbidden for good reason. They also prove that socialization is just as much a basic necessity as food and shelter.
