My Lobotomy
Tuesday, January 22nd, 2008
Howard Dully was the youngest person (12) to undergo a transorbital lobotomy, performed by Dr. Walter Freeman. Dully’s book My Lobotomy documents many things: how the medical establishment could allow Freeman to do such monsterous things, what it’s like to grow up with a traumatic brain injury, and how our culture tosses people aside that it can’t “fix.”
We watched The Lobotomist last night, an American Experience biographical piece on Freeman and the context in which lobotomy was invented (pre psycho-pharmacalogical drugs like thorazine). Both Anne and I were close to tears, were close to throwing up, and I could not get the images of ice picks being inserted into the eye sockets of patients (while they were awake) out of my head.
Most patients who underwent this procedure were psychotic, and while that’s no excuse for this neurological butchery, it makes Dully’s experience all the more meaningful: he was a typical boy who, like most boys, drove his step mother crazy by being a boy. She got tired of it and called in Freeman who had a “cure” for his hyperactivity: lobotomy.
I find it impossible to understsand how anyone could compartmentalize the brutality of lobotomy, just like I find it impossible to understand how anyone could compartmentalize the brutality of torture. Human beings are capable of doing such wonderful, and such horrific things.
My Lobotomy at Amazon.
at Amazon.
I too, cannot get the image of icepicks out of my minds. Even more to the point, (no pun intended), I am nauseated by my own personal weakness… that in facing extreme mental illness in my own son, I would in desperation be prone to allow my son to submit to such barbarity. Hey, I don’t know if you noticed… the PBS.org website has an online forum for this program through January 25th. Anyone can ask questions of many of the participants of The Lobotomist program.
Hero: me too. I’m now sorry I posted this because it’s a reminder of the entire thing.
The reason I focused this post on Howard rather than the show was to take the focus off of Freeman. He’s gone but we’ve still got people like Howard around and we’re still struggling with the moral and ethical landscape of mental illness.
Of course, I can’t help equating what Freeman did to what’s done these days under the banner of “aggressive interrogation” but is in fact, psychological torture which generally has a lasting effect on the psyche.
Thanks for corroborating my feelings in seeing this show, we need to force everyone to see things like this to show them what human beings are capable of.
Lest you think we’re above it, check this out: Milgram Experiment.
I took part in it in the ’60s. That’s another story…