It's the idea that werewolves who were wolves by birth (and who only discover their human side later on) find human behavior bizarre and incomprehensible. That they aren't comfortable using human tools, or living in human society, and that they generally loathe talking to or interacting with human beings at all. That they feel much more at home with "normal" wolves, and that they have a general disdain for all things hominid. (This convention typically makes a clear delineation between "nature" and "nurture" as well; even die hard city folk can learn to live in the country, so that's not the issue.)
Although this concept is an interesting tool for roleplaying wolf characters, beyond its meaning as a way to symbolize the separation of man with nature, it never made much sense to me.
One could argue that all the inherencies of being a human--abstract thought, introspection, and even tool innovation i.e. "technology"--are imprinted on an intrinsic, evolutionary level. Aspects of humanity should be passed on to a wolf-werewolf at least subconsciously... to have a human mind is to have a human mind, regardless of one's original form. On that assumption, such a werewolf should have little trouble understanding, integrating, and interacting with human beings, since the capacity for doing so is part of the total werewolf package. (Regardless of the fact that real wolves are very skittish with humans... in a fully sapient werewolf, one aspect of instinct shouldn't override all other predispositions of behavior, especially when things like self-consciousness and reasoning are thrown into the mix.)
Furthermore, even when discounting the above hypothesis, I don't see how human behavior would be fundamentally alien to a wolf anyway. I've read serious speculation that early human behavior was actually learned through the observation of wild animals, namely wolf packs, and that pack-oriented behavior in human beings may have developed less instinctually than observationally. Certainly we share many things in common with the wolf, at least on a basic cultural and emotional level. For Pete's sake, in real life we can teach canines how to mimic our speech, and they can teach us how to howl! (Of course wolves are different than dogs, but when talking about genetic memory, I believe some kind of fundamental species connection is still there, and that probably goes for any intelligent species with a long history of interaction with humanity.)
I think additional evidence against this convention would be to consider the opposite assumption: would a human-born werewolf find wolf behavior incomprehensible and strange, or would they loathe living around or spending time with the wolves who have suddenly become their family? Again, like the city-folk versus country-folk example, there might be an adaptation of preference, but the really important components of werewolf-wolf-human compatibility should already be hardwired in.
Before you respond, let me disclaim: I'm not one of those guys who thinks wolves are our "brothers," or who has a quasi-mystical interpretation of our post-modern view on them. (Or maybe I am, who knows?
)Just that if werewolves were real, between the two species who compose werewolf culture as a whole, culture shock would be far less intense than a lot of literature would have us believe.
