After The Asylum Summary

In class we were asked to read and summarize three blog posts on the Advances in the history of Psychology’s website. I decided to read and summarize the following blog entries: “After the Asylum/Après l’asile”, “Starved, tortured, forgotten: Genie, the feral child who left a mark on researchers”, and “APA out of Guantánamo.” The post “After the asylum discusses one of the biggest changes in our society regarding mental health and institutes during the late 20th century in Canada. The blog splits the discussion into four parts regarding: Policy and practice, peer support and activism, community initiatives, and early de-institutionalisation cases. While skimming through the individual sections I learned of the common paths people who were …show more content…
The story is about a girl named Genie who had been tied, locked in a dark room, and abused all of her childhood by her deranged father Clark Wiley. As a result of this abuse, genie has grown to not have any knowledge of social constructs, such as language and social interaction. Over time many psychologists had found obsession over Genie, and many tested theories and tried to teach her things. She had made progress, but they eventually found that some things are very difficult to teach, if at all, when secluded from society for so long and being past certain learning development stages. Genie was later institutionalized due to her mental instability. While reading this article I couldn't help but notice its similarities with other researched children such as little albert. Over time genie had fallen through the cracks of history to be lost, and now psychologists have been trying to find her to see if she had grown in mental development over time. I would recommend this article because it is interesting to read despite the horrible things that happened to poor Genie. It does give a good understanding of how adolescent psychological development is important, and how you are ultimately a product of your