"The syndrome (stress dwarfism) is extremely rare, and physicians fall over themselves to see the occasional cases. These are the kids who are incessantly harassed and psychologically terrorized. These are the kids who, when the police and social workers break down the door, are discovered to have been locked in a dark closet for months, fed a tray of food slipped under the door. ...
Despite the clinical rarity of stress dwarfism, instances pop up throughout history. One possible case arose during the thirteenth century as the result of an experiment by that noted endocrinologist, King Frederick II of Sicily. It seems that his court was engrossed in philosophic disputation over the natural language of humans. In an attempt to resolve the question, Frederick came up with a surprisingly sophisticated idea for an experiment. He commandeered a bunch of infants and had each reared in a room by itself. Every day someone would bring the child food, fresh blankets, and clean clothes, all of the best quality. But they wouldn't stay and play with the infant --too much of a chance that the person would speak in the child's presence. The infants would be reared without human language and everyone would get to see what was actually that natural language of humans.
Of course, the kids did not spontaneously burst out of the door one day reciting poetry in Italian or singing opera. The kids didn't burst out of the door at all. none of them survived. The lesson is obvious to us now--optimal growth and development do not meremly depend on being fed the right number of calories and on being kept warm.
p 84-84 Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers, Robert M. Sapolisky
Sapolsky has another section on biology, hormones, environment and depression. He talks about how only half of the people who are biologically predisposed to depression actually suffer from it. Another illustration of Justin's point.
Kelley