The second wave of lobotomies is being promoted by relatively few doctors, but they appear to have knives in a great many brains. The three most active psychosurgeons, Petter Linstrom, M. Hunter Brown, and Thomas Balentine, Jr., between them have done 500 operations since 1965. Dr. William Scoville of Yale University has operated for anxiety and depressions—especially on older people – schizophrenia, obsessive compulsions and drug addictions. He has done at least 1000 lobotomies.
A Tulane professor of Neurology and Psychiatry, Dr. Robert Heath, has implanted electrodes in the brains of at least 60 patients, using up to 125 electrodes. His patients sometimes walk around for years with the devices in their skulls. *One of Heath’s patients, a narcoleptic, was equipped with a device so that whenever he falls asleep, a fellow ward patient can arouse him.
What is the rationale for all this brain mutilation?
Breggin insists that there is no sound theoretical basis for it. While it is generally accepted that the frontal lobes of the brain and the limbic system control the higher mental functions including insight, foresight, empathy, imagination, creativity, abstract reasoning and emotional responsiveness, and it has been shown that lobotomy has a dulling effect on these functions, it has not been demonstrated that it is effective in alleviating the symptoms of mental illness.
It is, however, widely accepted, that lobotomy promotes docility and tameness, loss of affect, spontaneity, and fantasy life.
Scoville, one of the leading lobotomy proponents says it has a “blunting function.” The dean of American lobotomists, Dr. Walter Freeman of San Francisco, now retired, writes:
Theoretically, on the basis of personality studies, creativeness should be abolished by lobotomy… A few patients can run their own business or resume their professional status — medicine, law, etc… although they may not become leaders in their own professions, they serve adequately and comfortably.
Freeman claims lobotomy is most useful to women, blacks — and those with simpler jobs. Presumably it helps ease their drone-like living.
Brain mutilation is being promoted by other advocates as a cure for a wide variety of disorders including homosexuality, pederasty, gambling and rarely, agoraphobia. The English professional journal, The Lancet, recommended its use on sex offenders. “Castration is open to criticism on ethical grounds,” the editors noted, prompting this quip from Breggin: “Perhaps in England a man’s balls are more sacrosanct than his brains.” Lobotomy is also being recommended as a cure for tension, anxiety and emotionality. Breggin: “Hardly a reason for lopping pieces of their brains.” And, he adds, if the founder of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, was right in believing anxiety is a symptom, then the lobotomists are attacking the symptom without reaching its cause.
With all the lobotomies that have been done, 50,000 in this country alone, one would think there would have been some serious study of the practice. But, no: Breggin’s research shows that there is not a single adequately controlled study to be found. There have been only three controlled retrospective studies.
In 1962, Dr. Robert L. Vosburg reported on the results of 229 lobotomies and an equal number of controls. Five years after surgery, only 19 per cent in each group had been released from hospitals. The lobotomized, group had obvious brain damage, “the patients appeared to be withdrawn and hostile. In short, “the study notes, “they act as if they had been hurt.” Another study, tow years later, by Drs. McKenzie and Kaczanowski, concluded the lobotomized were no better off than operative group. The study recommended abandonment of the practice.
