Mowgli Syndrome

Remember Mowgli, the boy from The Jungle Book? Nowadays he’s better known from Walt Disney’s adaptation but originally he was the main character in Rudyard Kipling’s book with the same title. Mowgli is a boy who was raised by animals and the Mowgli Syndrome tries to describe the sign and symptoms of these so-called feral children.

Most of these children suffer from extreme emotional stress due to parental neglect and abuse. To find love, attention and kinship such children may turn to the company of dogs or wolfs. Then they adapt to the ways of these animals only to become trapped between the two worlds, not completely animal yet not entirely human.

When these children are ‘rescued’ they are very debilitated because they often need to learn to walk, talk and socialize with humans anew.