Genie: A Scientific Tragedy

When Genie stumbled into a social services office in California in November 1970, she was thirteen years old and had spent her life in unimaginable, isolated deprivation. Malnourished, incontinent, and unable to vocalise in any way, she was swiftly taken into the local children's hospital where her physical needs were seen to. But her other needs were more complex. As a team of pioneering psychologists and linguists gathered around Genie, it became clear that she offered an unparalleled opportunity to study the acquisition of language and to judge how, when and why humans develop this crucial skill. Genie's case would become famous, or perhaps 'notorious' is a better word. She still appears today in psychology textbooks and, indeed, that's where I first discovered her during my A levels.But Rymer's book isn't a simple record of the case. There are two strands to the story: one following Genie herself, and the other following the researchers around her. He records the growing fractures within the group, who advocated different styles of care or different intensities of testing, and reports how these academic disagreements quickly grew into poisonous personal enmity. This requires a certain degree of detail about debates within the field of linguistics, as well as a potted history of Victor of Aveyron, a child in the 19th century whose circumstances were broadly similar to Genie's. Most significantly, Rymer recounts the way in which Genie's own needs and best interests were eclipsed by these tensions within her team. The subtitle of this edition is absolutely spot-on: this is a tragedy, in that a vulnerable girl's life becomes caught up in the vagaries of academic funding and intellectual fashion. And I feel it's a story that needs to be told. It was important to make the benefits, and shortcomings, of this case public so that the scientific community could work to ensure better practice in the future.Personally I felt that Rymer has dealt with the issues very well. He has interviewed, and built relationships with virtually everyone involved in the case and he allows everyone their side of the story. Yet he never allows you to forget the humanity at the story's heart - Genie, who should have been the most important figure in the story, but whose personal needs ended up being lost in a maelstrom of academic squabbling. I understand that there was controversy on the book's publication, as you might imagine - because some figures don't come out of the story very well - but it strikes me as an impartial, thorough and sensitive exploration of an important case.A longer review of this book is available on my blog (see my profile).

I didn't know how to rate this, it's a dawn good book, but it's a terrible story. This girl, this woman, Genie, has never ever been threaten as a human being, not in her childhood, not in her "freedom" as a grownup. I had to close the book some times to digest the words. Through the book I never lost the hope that Genie would be "free" - but....

Interesting subject but boringly written

This book may not be for everyone, as it gets quite technical on language and digs deep into the history of feral children. I happen to be interested in both, as well as in Genie's own story, so i couldn't have loved it more.The writing is beautiful and the author manages to engage wth the subject without taking any sides.A fantastic read.

I first heard about Genie in one of my psychology text books, and wanted to find out more.Brilliant book, but i wouldnt recomend it for people who have no understanding of psychology, as it can be a bit heavy going at times, and also deals a lot with linguistics, which can be a bit tricky to understand.Overall i found this a great read, and recomend for anyone wishing to find out more about Genie

Unlike some very dry texts on linguistics using technical language that is hard to read, this was a very insightful book told almost in story fashion about a little girl found not in the woods or the jungle but inner city CaliforniaFactual and highly engaging from the POV of psychology as well as linguistics, and an indictment of how science failed these subjects and history is destined to repeat itself

I haven't as yet read the book, I am giving it 3 stars though because the copy I received was more tatty than expected and it took longer to arrive than I would of liked. It did however arrive in the very wide range of possible arrival dates, so cannot complain too much.

A little disappointing. I felt too much time was spent talking about other scientific cases that it actually failed to tell, in any depth, Genie's story.