Mowgli syndrome

“Mowgli syndrome” is a term used by Wendy Doniger O’Flaherty in her 1995 book Other Peoples’ Myths: The Cave of Echoes to describe mythological figures who succeed in bridging the animal and human worlds to become one with nature, a human animal, only to become trapped between the two worlds, not completely animal yet not entirely human.

It is also a rarely used descriptive term for so-called feral children; “Mowgli syndrome” is not a recognized psychological or physiological malady. The term originates from the character Mowgli, a fictional feral child from Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book.

See also

• Feral children in mythology and fiction