2:59pm July 14, 2014

“Later, when asked about patients whose brains appeared to be damaged by the [lobotomy] surgery, [Dr. Walter] Freeman had this optimistic spin: “Maybe it will be shown that a mentally ill patient can think more clearly and constructively with less brain in actual operation.””

—

Dully, Howard; Fleming, Charles (2007-09-04). My Lobotomy (p. 66). Crown Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

This is a book by a lobotomy survivor, by the way, and so far it’s been really interesting in a horrific sort of way. I’d recommend it if you can stomach it. Be aware, though, that it’s one of those books like “The Last Time I Wore A Dress”, where part of the horror for many readers is that the guy in question wasn’t actually mentally ill, he was just a high-spirited child of a highly controlling mother who was told by every psychiatrist she took him to that he was fine until she found one that would do a lobotomy on him. So it’s one of those stories, and if you’re sensitive to that kind of thing, be aware of it before reading.

This would have been just as horrific if done to a mentally ill person, and I think the author is aware of that, but I’m not sure all the readers are. I had a really hard time reading The Last Time I Wore A Dress, because all the reviews I heard were “isn’t it horrible that they did this because of her gender expression, she wasn’t even crazy” rather than “isn’t it horrible that they did this to anyone at all”. It’s like… in Canada there were all these people who were locked up and brutalized and raped and they got a public apology after it was determined they weren’t mentally ill or intellectually disabled, but the people in the same institutions who were mentally ill or intellectually disabled got no apology even though they were brutalized and raped as well.