Social Isolation and Socialization
France. He was filthy, naked, and unable to speak. He had not been toilet
trained. After the police took him to a local orphanage, he repeatedly tried to
escape and refused to wear clothes. No parent ever claimed him. He became
known as “the wild boy of Aveyron.” A thorough medical examination found
no major physical or mental abnormalities. Why, then, did the boy seem more
animal than human? Because, until he walked out of the woods, he apparently
had been raised in isolation from other people (Shattuck, 1980).
Similar horrifying reports lead to the same conclusion. Occasionally a child
is found locked in an attic or a cellar, where he or she saw another person for
only short periods each day to receive food. Like the wild boy of Aveyron, such
children rarely develop normally. Typically, they remain disinterested in games.
They cannot form intimate social relationships with other people. They develop
only the most basic language skills.
Some of these children may suffer from congenitally subnormal intelligence.
The amount and type of social contact they had before they were discovered
is unknown. Some may have been abused. Therefore, their condition
may not be a result of social isolation alone. However, these examples do at least
suggest that the ability to learn culture and become human is only a potential.
To be actualized, socialization must unleash this human potential. Socialization
is the process by which people learn their culture. They do so by (1) taking
on different roles at different times, and
(2) becoming
aware of themselves as
they interact with others.
A role is the
behavior expected of a person occupying
a particular position in society.
Convincing evidence of the importance
of socialization in unleashing
human potential comes from a study
conducted by René Spitz (1945, 1962).
Spitz compared children who were
being raised in an orphanage with children
who were being raised in a nursing
home attached to a prison for women.
Both institutions were hygienic and
provided good food and medical care.
However, the children’s mothers cared
for them in the nursing home, whereas
just six nurses cared for the 45 children
in the orphanage. The orphans therefore
had much less contact with other people. Moreover, from their cribs, the nursing home
infants could taste a slice of society.
They saw other babies playing and receiving care.
They saw mothers,
doctors, and nurses talking, cleaning, serving food, and giving medical
treatment. In contrast, the nurses in the orphanage would hang sheets from the cribs
to prevent the infants from seeing the activities of the institution. Depriving the infants
of social stimuli for most of the day apparently made them less demanding.
Social deprivation had other effects too. By the age of 9 to 12 months, the orphans
were more susceptible to infections and had a higher death rate than the children in the
nursing home did. By the time they were 2 to 3 years old, all the children from the nursing
home—compared with fewer than 8 percent of the orphans—were walking and talking.
Normal children begin playing with their own genitals by the end of their first year.
Spitz found that the orphans began this sort of play only in their fourth year. He took
this behavior as a sign that they might have an impaired sexual life when they reached
maturity. This outcome had occurred in rhesus monkeys raised in isolation. Spitz’s study
amounts to compelling evidence for the importance of childhood socialization in making
us fully human. Without childhood socialization, most of our human potential remains
undeveloped.
The Crystallization of Self-Identity
The formation of a sense of self continues in adolescence. Adolescence is a particularly
turbulent period of rapid self-development. Consequently, many people remember experiences
from their youth that helped crystallize their self-identity. Do you? Robert
Brym clearly recalls one such defining moment (Brym, 2006).
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