The Wild Boy of Aveyron

The Wild Boy of Aveyron (1976), a history book by American psychologist Harlan Lane, relates the story of Victor of Aveyron, a “feral child” who was taken to Paris in 1800 to be studied by the pioneering French scientist Jean-Marc Gaspard Itard. For years Victor lived with Itard, who attempted to teach him to use language, with limited success. The methods Itard developed while working with Victor proved useful in the scientist’s later work with deaf, mute, and mentally disabled children, and today Itard is regarded as the founder of special education. As well as providing a narrative account of this history, Lane offers a specialist’s analysis of Itard’s findings and of his legacy in Lane’s own academic discipline.

In 1800, a naked boy—about 12 years old, judging by his appearance—is glimpsed roaming the wooded countryside outside the southern French town of Aveyron. He is captured and taken to the local priest, who discovers that the boy has no shame about his nakedness or bodily functions, cannot speak, and wants only to eat, sleep, or escape. The priest, concluding that the boy is more animal than man, passes him into the care of a naturalist in the nearby town of Ittidez. The naturalist trains the boy as he trains his dogs, using a leash to restrain him and housebreaking him to perform his functions in the garden.

The naturalist publishes a book about the boy, drawing the attention of the broader scientific community, and the boy is entrusted to the renowned Roche-Ambroise Sicard, director of Paris’s Institute for Deaf-Mutes. Sicard finds the boy entirely unresponsive. He assembles a team of leading experts, headed by pioneering psychiatrist Philippe Pinet, which pronounces the boy an “idiot,” that is, developmentally disabled.



The fate of an “idiot” is committal to an asylum, but the boy is saved by the 25-year-old scientist Jean-Marc Itard, who disagrees with Pinet’s conclusion and requests to study the boy for himself.

Itard brings the boy to live with him. Naming him Victor, Itard begins a six-year effort to see what the boy is capable of learning. Believing that the capacity for empathy and for language are the distinguishing features of human beings, Itard hypothesizes that it should be possible to teach Victor both. He is assisted by the good-hearted Madame Guenn, a widow who becomes more or less a foster mother to Victor.

After six months, Itard makes his first report, to the Society of Observers of Man. He produces evidence of a significant improvement in Victor’s behavior and apparent intellectual capacities. He does not submit another report for five years, and when he does, he admits that progress has all but stalled. Although he has learned some basic word recognition and has demonstrated empathetic behaviors, Victor has not learned to speak. Serious obstacles appear to prevent further progress.



Itard argues in his report that his work with Victor establishes the “psychological truth” that the ability to learn by imitation fades after a certain age—a hypothesis that enjoys currency today. Itard also observes that Victor’s puberty manifests “almost explosively.” The manner of this explosion casts “much doubt on the origin of certain affections of the heart that we look upon as very natural.” Itard reports that Victor appeared to have little to no automatic comprehension of his sexual organs or their relation to “the other sex.” In other words, Victor’s case appears to suggest that sexual behavior is learned, rather than instinctual.

Victor dies twenty years later, still a ward of the state. In the meantime, Itard goes on to a pioneering scientific and medical career. He develops methods for teaching the deaf, mute, and mentally disabled and makes foundational discoveries in otolaryngology. In his work with deaf and mute children, he crystallizes an idea which first came to him during his work with Victor, that emotional development goes hand-in-hand with intellectual development: “How false is that opinion of certain moralists who have believed that there is nothing in common between the mind and feelings.”

Lane offers some professional criticism of Itard’s approach. He suggests that Itard probably erred in his decision to isolate Victor from other children of his own age, in “a misguided attempt at total pedagogy.” Lane also argues that Victor should have been taught sign language, in which Victor was demonstrably more able than spoken language: Itard’s choice to persist in teaching speech was based on a then-ongoing debate about the value of sign language. Lane also criticizes the Pinel report, which diagnosed Victor as an “idiot”: “There are so many flaws in Pinel's argument that it is hard to understand why it has had so much weight.” Lane concludes that Itard’s analysis of Victor’s case was essentially correct. Victor was probably normal. His survival in the wild and his initial progress with Itard rule out developmental disability. Instead, as Itard argued, Victor’s case provides evidence that there is a critical period during which spoken language must be learned: by age 12 it is too late to teach a normal human being to speak.



However, Lane suggests that Itard himself may have changed his mind about Victor. Reporting on his work with deaf-mutes, Itard warns his fellow educators to work only with subjects whose ability to learn has been proven: “Having once been gravely mistaken on this point, I take note of it here.” Lane suggests that Itard has Victor in mind here, implying that Itard had come to the conclusion that Victor was not, in fact, teachable.

Although Itard may have concluded that his work with Victor was a failure, it undeniably laid the groundwork for a brilliant career and a lasting legacy. “Itard had set out to train an enfant savage; by his journey’s end he had become the originator of instructional devices, the inventor of behavior modification, the first speech and hearing specialist, founder of otolaryngology, creator of oral education of the deaf, and father of special education for the mentally and physically handicapped.”