The Forbidden Experiment: The Story of the Wild Boy of Aveyron

By Roger Shattuck

Book Overview

The true story of the nineteenth century's so-called "Wild Boy of Aveyron"--an abandoned French child who lived for years alone in the wilderness before being brought under the care of an innovative young physician.

"Before dawn on January 9, 1800, a remarkable creature came out of the woods near the village of Saint-Sernin in southern France." So begins Roger Shattuck's book about the so-called Wild Boy of Aveyron--a child abandoned by his caretakers and captured, years later, while scavenging food from a garden. Unable to speak, he was sent to the National Institute for the Deaf in Paris, declared a hopeless case, and left to languish.

One day, however, Jean Itard, a young medical student from the provinces, took notice of the boy. Itard began to spend time with him, and soon the two found ways to interact. With games and toys Itard engaged the boy's senses and imagination, developing methods of education (some of which went on to form a basis for special education and the Montessori method) that brought him out further. For a while Victor--as Itard named him--made progress, but soon it stalled. Isolated behind institutional walls, the boy lived out the rest of his life a stone's throw from the Luxembourg Gardens.

The Forbidden Experiment tells the story of a tragic young man and the extraordinary doctor who tried, however imperfectly, to help him. It is a story of compassion, like the case studies of Oliver Sacks--a figure whom Itard foreshadows. It is also a story that leads Shattuck to ask deep questions about the human animal: What is language, how do we acquire it, and what do we become if we are deprived of it?

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1681379775
• ISBN13: 9781681379777
• Release Date: August 2025
• Publisher: New York Review of Books
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 0.60 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.3" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

A true story about a wild child in France!

Before dawn on January 9, 1800, a remarkable creature crept out of the woods near the village of Saint-Sernin in southern France. He was animal in behaviour, human in form, mute, and naked except for the tatters of a shirt. Eight months later, the wild boy of Aveyron was the wonder of Paris. This book is Shattuck's moving account of an untamed boy and the young French doctor who tried to civilize him-a case that has fascinated intellectual and scientific circles for centures. Captivating such diverse thinkers as Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Bruno /Bettelheim, and inspiring Francois Truffaut's celebrated film "The Wild Child", the compelling notion of the Noble Savage still haunts our imaginations today. "A touching story, told with insight and compassion...evokes the theme and myth, the fantasy of the flight from society, not only to the woods but deeper into self" - Los Angeles Times Quote. "No one has ever addressed the issues of - freedom, humanity, culture, doubt and wonder-with more intelligence and grace" - The New York Times Quote. I found this to be a fascinating and amazing read.

A true story about a wild child in France!

Before dawn on January 9, 1800, a remarkable creature crept out of the woods near the village of Saint-Sernin in southern France. He was animal in behaviour, human in form, mute, and naked except for the tatters of a shirt. Eight months later, the wild boy of Aveyron was the wonder of Paris. This book is Shattuck's moving account of an untamed boy and the yound french doctor who tried to civilize him-a case that has fascinated intellectual and scientific circles for centures. Captivating such diverse thinkers as Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Bruno /Bettelheim, and inspiring Francois Truffaut's celebrated film The Wild Child", the compelling notion of the the Noble Savage still haunts our imaginations today. "A touching story, told with insight and compassion...evokes the thems and myth, the fantasy of the flight from society, not only to the woods vbut deeper into self" - Los Angeles Times Quote. "No one has ever addressed the issues-of freedom, humanity, culture, doubt and wonder-with more intelligence and grace" - The New York Times Quote. I found this to be a fascinating and amazing read.

A Thoughtful Narrative of What It Means to Be Human

..."The Forbidden Experiment: The Story of the Wild Boy of Aveyron" is a fascinating exploration of what it means to be human and how our humanity is, in a sense, created by the society in which we live, defined by our communications and relationships with others. In telling this story, Roger Shattuck has thoughtfully and sympathetically interwoven the factual story of the Wild Boy with the philosophical, psychological and historical background that ultimately makes this story so interesting. Thus, Shattuck explores the historical peculiarities of the Languedoc region from which the Wild Boy came (known for the poetry and song of the troubadors, as well as the Albigensian heresy), the historical forces which made him such a topic of interest (he was a boy seemingly straight from Rousseau's state of nature at a time when the French Revolution had given way to Napoleon), and the philosophical and psychological forerunners (Locke, Condillac, Rousseau) that provided the intellectual impetus for marking this "tabula rasa" of humanity. Shattuck's book also provides interesting appendices containing other published accounts of the Wild Boy of Aveyron, other cases of isolation and deprivation (including Kaspar Hauser, Peter of Hanover, The Elephant Man, and Helen Keller), and a short essay on Francois Truffaut's 1970 film, "The Wild Child," which is based upon the story of the Wild Boy of Aveyron.While simple in the telling, "The Forbidden Experiment" is a book which poses the deepest and most enigmatic of questions, the question of what it means to be human. Read it, ponder it, learn from it.

Thoughtful, Sympathetic Story of What It Means to be Human

In January, 1800, a boy of about eleven or twelve years old walked out of the woods near the village of Saint-Sernin in the Languedoc region of southern France. Except for a tattered shirt, he was naked. He had no shame or concern for his nakedness and had no ability to speak. He made only strange and apparently meaningless sounds and cries. While human in appearance, he lacked any qualities which otherwise would suggest that he was part of any human society. The boy was captured by a villager, transported and kept for several months in an orphanage in a nearby town, and eventually transferred to Paris in June, 1800, where "The Wild Boy of Aveyron" was claimed "for science and humanity" by the newly-formed Society of Observers of Man. In Paris, the boy was given over to the Abbe Sicard, a famous educator and the head of the Institute for Deaf-Mutes. "Miracles were expected of Sicard, for some of his deaf-mute pupils had made a reputation by their intelligence and wit in answering written questions before large audiences." Sicard, however, apparently believed that he could never train the seemingly wild creature and made no efforts to do so. Instead, he left the boy to run wild at the Institute and a commission appointed by the Society of the Observers of Man subsequently declared him to be an incurable idiot.It is at this point, however, sometime in the summer or fall of 1800, that the course of the Wild Boy's life took a different course. A twenty-five year old medical student, Jean-Marc Gaspard Itard began working at the Institute and became interested in the boy. More or less simultaneously with the declaration by the Society of the Observers of Man that the boy was an incurable idiot in November of that year, Itard was hired and given a room at the Institute for the sole purpose of working with the boy. Itard named the boy Victor and went on, over the course of the next six years and with the able assistance of a motherly figure by the name of Madame Guerin, to train the boy in accordance with principles Itard had derived from the writings of Locke and Condillac. These principles were intended to give the boy the ability to respond to other people, to train his senses, to extend his physical and social needs, to teach him to speak, and to teach him to think and reason logically. While Itard was never fully successful in achieving all of his objectives, his work was remarkably original and his observations and experiments have left the world with a fascinating picture of the Wild Boy of Aveyron."The Forbidden Experiment: The Story of the Wild Boy of Aveyron" is a fascinating exploration of what it means to be human and how our humanity is, in a sense, created by the society in which we live, defined by our communications and relationships with others. In telling this story, Roger Shattuck has thoughtfully and sympathetically interwoven the factual story of the Wild Boy with the philosophical, psychological and historical background that ultima

A beautiful, poignant account

Shattuck writes a beautiful, poignant account about an event that forever influenced the course of modern day psychology. Shattuck not only discusses "Victor" himself (behavior, reactions, etc.), but also discusses the recupercusions his capture, attempted treatment, and attempted enculturalization had philosophically, morally, and psychologically. This is definitely a well written, well researched, 3-dimensional book. It explores the subject on every level possible.