Bumble Bee Tuna

The other day in Psych 101 we read this article about a girl ("Genie") who was locked in a closet strapped to a potty for the first 13 years of her life, deprived of just about everything you can be deprived of aside from food and water. An interesting thing I read in the article is that the girl when brought into society masturbated constantly with just about anything she could find.

I just thought this was interesting and was wondering if it made anyone think at all about what they think of children, innocence, sex, masturbation, consent, and societal conditioning. I don't really intend to get into the stuff like "Man-Boy Love" did but I was just curious.

-B

Talulah

She would have been uneducated in the most extreme form of the word, maybe non-verbal, but apart from pyschological trauma, she would still have mental capacities in there somewhere. There could be many reasons but I would imagine the most likely would be that it was a very comfortable and familiar method of self-love and pleasure to her. I don't see how innocence figures in.

I have read that most children discover 'those parts' feel very nice when manipulated at a young age. What stops them is parental instruction and/or guilt. They also develop socially to understand it isn't acceptable to pleasure yourself in public.

I guess, what I am trying to say, is that it doesn't surprise me. It is a normal physical issue, a base drive and comforting to boot.

Treacle Worshipper

I agree with Talulah. It would be something she found comforting and pleasurable and wasn't socialised out of. Also, being brought out into society would be extremely stressful for her. If masturbation was the only comfort she had ever had, she would be likely to do it more frequently when she came into such a stressful situation and had no other way of coping.
TW

Lobstrosity

She was non-verbal. No one was ever able to teach her how to speak or understand the spoken word. She is a classic case study used in support of the notion of a "critical period" of psychological development. By the time she was discovered and released, her brain had essentially stopped growing and was hard-wired. It had not formed essential structures necessary for many complex human thought processes.

livius drusus

I'm with Tal, Treacle and Lobstrosity on this one. I saw an episode of Nova about Genie some time ago and I do not believe she was exploring the complexities of her sexuality when masturbating, but was instead engaging in a basic, physically pleasurable activity.

Amen-Moses

Well I must admit that when I'm bashing the bishop or tugging the todger it is definitely a detailed exploration of my sexuality!

Amen-Moses

Talulah

I remember reading about that. There was also another girl, I think, who was found when she was about 5 who had been deprived of social contact and locked up somewhere. They couldn't make her stop doing socially unacceptable things, like touching strangers in public places and things like that. Something, some check mechanism in her was 'broken' (or more likely just dead or undeveloped).

livius drusus

Now, now, Amen-Moses. Don't be so, erm, hard on yourself. I'm sure what goes on in your head is of an extensively detailed depravity, basic hand gestures notwithstanding.

The material point, of course, is that issues of pre-pubescent sexual exploration are not so easily addressed using Genie as an example because the circumstances of her childhood are so atypical.

VivaHedone

See 'Sex and Childhood Innocence'.

Guillaume

Broken you say ? You make it sounds as if acting in a way acceptable to society is a genetic tray. But what is truly genetic is the way children imitate and absorb what is around them, including social norms.

Indeed, her "social mechanism" was not broken, simply because it was never built to begin with. The "mechanism" that prevent us from doing "socially unacceptable" things is purely a social construction. Essentially, "normal", civilised children are being told again and again to act in a socially acceptable way : it become hard-wired in their brain. By being isolated from society, she was also isolated from social "brainwashing".