The Lobotomist

Recently, in class we saw a video that was quite shocking for myself. Its pretty interesting how scientists as well as psychiatrists were speculating on the reasons why people suffer from depression. Such controversial “disease” had to be treated someway and somehow. Over the years, Dr. Walter Freeman, a prestigious American physician who specialized in lobotomy, conducted tons of lobotomies on typically adults. Not only was Walter Freeman’s prestige acquired through his famous lobotomies but he was as well part of the American Psychiatric Association. It is said that Freeman performed over 2500 lobotomies all over the United States. With just having the knowledge of neurology and no surgical training, Freeman initially worked with some surgeons, one of them James W. Watts. Watts become popularized because of the fact that he performed prefrontal lobotomies. Once in handy, the idea of practicing lobotomy skills on Freeman’s patients, he and Watts perform a more easy and effective procedure. In it, they first had to gather ice picks and a hammer, using the ice picks, Freeman hammered the ice picks into each frontal lobe, through the back of the eye socket. The advantages to this procedure was that it could be effectively carried out outside an operating room and without a surgeon. While Freeman was impatient about the famous pioneer, Moniz, he was finally able to come up with a momentarily effective way to treat mentally ill patients. Just with a light tap of a mallet, and the wishing back and forth of the ice picks he could make miracles. The prior difficult patients were no passive. Freeman recommended this intense procedure for everything, whether it be psychosis, depression, neurosis or criminality. Freeman even developed what people called assembly line lobotomies, in which he went from one patient to another ice picking their eye ball sockets and jiggling what is the frontal lobes of the brain. It is said that some of his surgeons even fainted at experiencing such hard method to which patients were summoned. Studies show that even Watts agreed on the level of harshness in this experiment. Among the strengths of this experiment lie the fact that it was a procedure of minutes which was most likely to stabilize the patient. Moreover, Dr. Freeman himself performed between 3,500 and 5,00 “soul surgeries”, of which he claimed to be used in schizoprenics, depressive people, people suffering from chronic pain and other mental and physical conditions. This “soul surgery” was not only aimed at functioning in a brief amount of diseases it rather helped treat and even cure many diseases. Amonf the weaknesess of the experiment lie, the violence that is induced in its patients, this considered to be totally unethical should not be implemented whatsoever. Furthermore, the procedure had not been tested before, they rather used it without testing it before, due to this results were not always the desired ones. Likewise, lobotomies were said to “violate the principles of humanity and chanfe and insane person into an idiot”. Even worst, psychiatrists were accustomed to performing long-term care for their patients in order to assess the surgery’s effectiveness. In the end lobotomies were very useful during its due time, through the course of history its uses include, treating patients with psychological illnesses and behavioral disorders, and in place of recommending medications, talk therapy and other forms of treatment, these lobotomies were performed as a fast track to end the disease or illness. Freeman in psychology history is a well known neurologist who awakened people since his texistence into brainstorming new and improved ways on performing lobotomies, he was the one to discover that it was passible to access the frontal cortex thrugh a human’s eye sockets. With this he was able to improve some person’s lives but also damage others’.



Works Cited:

Renato Sabbatini, "The History of Psychosurgery" (Brain and Mind, June 1997). A selection from this article is available at http://www.epub.org.br/cm/n02/historia/lobotomy.htm.

Freeman, Shanna. "How Lobotomies Work." Discovery Health. Web. 22 Mar. 2011. .