Reining in the Prodigy

There seems no question that William James Sidis was a genius. Born in New York City in 1898, his parents, Boris and Sarah, were Russian immigrants and intellectuals who had fled to the U.S. to escape persecution.Boris earned his M.D. and Ph.D. degrees at Harvard University and taught psychology there. He was a close friend of William James who was his son's godfather (William was also named for him). Sarah was an M.D. whose family fled the Russian pogroms ten years before William's birth. She gave up her medical career to be a full-time mother to her son (and later daughter). They both held radical notions concerning early child education (radical for the time anyway) and encouraged William to learn without using the discipline that characterized education in that era. The results were nothing less than spectacular: William could read the New York Times by the age of 18 months and taught himself eight languages by the time he was eight (he also invented a new language and a new logarithm table). At the age of 11, he entered Harvard as part of an experimental program along with other promising prodigies including Norbert Weiner and Buckminster Fuller. He excelled in higher mathematics and language and a brilliant future was predicted for him. Intelligence testing was still in its infancy (and Boris dismissed IQ tests as "pedantic and misleading") but later estimates would put William's IQ in the 250 to 300 range. He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts Degree with full honours at the age of 16.

And then things went downhill from there...

His lifelong feud with the press began with an interview before graduation in which he stated that he planned to remain celibate and that women did not appeal to him. Publicity over the interview may have been the cause of his being threatened by a gang of Harvard students and which led to his leaving Harvard to go to Rice University in Texas. After some time, he abandoned mathematics and enrolled in Harvard Law School in 1916. He withdrew three years later without finishing and became involved in political causes including being a conscientious objector to the World War I draft.

His arrest in 1919 for participating in a socialist rally that turned violent caused him to be sentenced to 18 months in prison for rioting and assault (there is some question concerning the legitimacy of the charges). His father made a special arrangement with the District Attorney to keep William out of prison by having him sent to his private sanatorium instead. This seemed to be an especially dark time of William's life and he never forgave his parents for "kidnapping" him and holding him against his will for more than a year. He accused them of subjecting him to various forms of "mental torture" including scolding and nagging for hours at a time. He was frequently threatened with transfer to a regular insane asylum where his prospects for an eventual release would be slim.

William eventually managed to escape in 1921 but he never reconciled with his parents. His experience in the sanatorium had left him "scared of his own shadow" and his parents' efforts to have him returned to their care made him extremely paranoid about his privacy and intrusions into his life. He spent the rest of his life apparently drifting between menial jobs although he continued to publish a range of eclectic works (mostly under pseudonyms) that still attracts a cult following. He especially resented intrusions into his life by the press (who regularly presented him as being an unhappy and burned-out product of his forced acceleration) and even sued one paper for what he considered to be a libelous article about him that caused "grievous mental anguish and humiliation". The stress from the lawsuit may have contributed to his death from a cerebral hemorrhage in 1944.

What do we make of William Sidis? Despite his early death and failure to live up to his early potential, his case is still followed in educational circles. Would things have turned out differently had his parents not intervened in his jail sentence as they did? Some questions can't be answered.

Comments

[Alison Hymes]

You're right that there is no way to know for sure how things could have turned out differently, but if speculation is allowed, the problem of parents who want to maintain control over an adult child remains to this day and continues in my opinion to cause many problems for the adult children of these parents.

Of course just being in the asylum could have caused PTSD, who knows, but having parents who could hold that over him was bound to have a psychological effect on him.

Adults need to separate from their parents, we all know that, and yet when it comes to adults with psychiatric labels, many seem to forget what they know.

[Romeo Vitelli]

The additional problem is that there is no actual evidence that William was ever mentally ill. His parents used their influence to keep him out of jail and locked up in their sanatorium "for his own good". They may have felt justified in doing what they did but it still marked their son.

[Sandra]

Living up to one's potential, what a terrible phrase that is. Seems many people (if not most) don't.

[David Harmon]

So, apparently the parents decided that letting him go to jail for 18 months was so intolerable, that they just had to put him in an even more controlling environment. Not only confining him, but also making it clear that they considered his greatest resource and ability (intelligence) to be fundamentally flawed ("insane"). Oh yeah, and forget that 18-month sentence, if he didn't knuckle under, they'd just leave him in the looney bin forever.

And then they probably wondered why their brilliant little boy didn't want to fulfill their ambitions anymore....