Althouse: Worse than living with a lobotomy.

September 14, 2007

Worse than living with a lobotomy.

Living with the knowledge that your parents procured a lobotomy for you.

37 comments:

George M. Spencer said...: Mind you (no joke intended), many lobotomies were performed trans-orbitally, meaning through the bone in the back of the eye socket under local anesthesia.

There are actually transcripts of patients describing their mental status as their frontal lobes are scrambled. Think--HAL as his memory rods are removed.

For more, go to

http://www.lobotomist.com/

Also, "Great and Desperate Cures" by Valenstein.

You'll learn that the procedure was invented in Spain, performed on a few animals, then the experimenter wrote a medical paper. It got translated, and it was off to the races--docs started doing these procedures.....like crazy...; 9/14/07, 8:28 AM
EnigmatiCore said...: Give me a bottle in front of me instead of a frontal lobotomy, that's my motto.; 9/14/07, 8:38 AM
Meade said...: Mr. Dully lost his mother when he was 4. She died giving birth to his younger brother, who was born with severe brain damage. His father, scarred by the Depression and overseas military duty in World War II, was emotionally distant and physically brutal. His stepmother, the cast-off child of a Jazz Age flapper, survived one marriage to an alcoholic and, with two children of her own in tow, came into little Howard’s life like an avenging angel. A harsh disciplinarian and obsessive housecleaner, she took an instant dislike to the boy, whom she regarded as dirty, rebellious and incorrigible.

I wonder what Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr. thought his excuse was. Anti-Irish prejudice?; 9/14/07, 8:44 AM
Roger J. said...: Before I read the article, I suspected it might have been a rehash of the the Kennedy's sad story about lobotomizing their daughter.; 9/14/07, 8:45 AM
Meade said...: Roger, Joseph P. had his daughter lobotomized without consulting his wife.; 9/14/07, 8:55 AM
George M. Spencer said...: Note the author's name...

Dully

Oooo....; 9/14/07, 8:57 AM
Richard Fagin said...: "A harsh disciplinarian and obsessive housecleaner, [s]he took an instant dislike to the [boy] two step children, whom [s]he regarded as dirty, rebellious and incorrigible."

Damn, where do I sign up my step kids for lobotomies?; 9/14/07, 9:08 AM
Anonymous said...: When asked what the next great technological challenge would be, Robert Oppenheimer replied, "The development of an intercontinental pre-frontal lobotomy."

I think a stealth version has already been deployed and used.

That would explain so much.; 9/14/07, 9:09 AM
Roger J. said...: Meade: thanks for the correction! I had forgotten that equally sad fact.; 9/14/07, 9:25 AM
hdhouse said...: Those interested might read http://www.mindfully.org/Health/2003/Mad-In-AmericaJun03.htm

as well as http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aso/databank/entries/dh35lo.html

and freedom and justice for all....; 9/14/07, 9:28 AM
Maxine Weiss said...: http://www.szasz.com/; 9/14/07, 9:40 AM
Dust Bunny Queen said...: Ah, how things have improved since then.

Now, when we can't deal with normal active children; we drug them and give them chemical lobotomies. So much better, doncha think. (sarcasm); 9/14/07, 9:41 AM
Maxine Weiss said...: "'imbeciles, dotards, idoits, drunkards, simpletons, fools,' and 'the aged, the vagabond, the helpless......"

"In 1870, the federal census classified one in every 489 Californians as insane. By 1880, the rate had risen to one in 345. After 1903, when the rate had reached one in 260 and the asylums had passed capacity,..."

(Hey, maybe the new UCI Law School really WILL be 4th Tier!); 9/14/07, 9:51 AM
AlphaLiberal said...: EnigmatiCore stole my line already but...
I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy.; 9/14/07, 10:04 AM
Meade said...: Come to think of it, that might have been Joseph P's excuse -- a bottle in front of him.; 9/14/07, 10:14 AM
Maxine Weiss said...: My goodness, where's Dr. Helen ???

Strangely silent.

I would think Dr. Helen would voraciously defend such procedures as lobotomy, electro-shock, mass sterilization etc... lest she be guilty of insubordination, and be made a pariah amongst her dignified mental health colleagues.

Never speak ill of the mental health community.

http://www.cchr.com/; 9/14/07, 10:18 AM
Trooper York said...: I thought that motto was on the Kennedy family crest.; 9/14/07, 10:18 AM
vnjagvet said...: The doctor made it sound so scientific and helpful.

Without the scientific patina, it sounds like the something the Mayan shamans did with daggars to get rid of evil spirits possessing their troublesome tribesfolks.; 9/14/07, 10:22 AM
Maxine Weiss said...: It was first used in Nazi concentration camps....that's where Freeman got it from.

The Mental Health Community still rhapsodizes over it, and wants to re-legalize.; 9/14/07, 10:25 AM
Meade said...: "Never speak ill of the mental health community.

http://www.cchr.com/"

Maxine, You're a member of the Church of Scientology?; 9/14/07, 10:30 AM
vnjagvet said...: Not my mental health professional, Maxine;.); 9/14/07, 10:31 AM
Tim said...: No one should be surprised that in the intersection of science and the ever-human desire to perfect human behavior and biology, monstrous accidents, intended or not, happen.; 9/14/07, 11:04 AM
Maxine Weiss said...: Before criticizing Scientology you'd better read Althouse's treatise on it:

http://althouse.blogspot.com/2007/07/when-germans-think-theyre-being-anti.html

Psychiatrists were the most honored in the Nazi party. No wonder Germans hate Scientologists!; 9/14/07, 11:44 AM
Revenant said...: Now, when we can't deal with normal active children; we drug them and give them chemical lobotomies. So much better, doncha think. (sarcasm)

You might be being sarcastic, but yes -- it IS much better. The most obvious way in which it is better is that you can stop giving the kid drugs. You can't unlobotomize someone.; 9/14/07, 12:37 PM
Meade said...: Maxine Weiss said...
"Before criticizing Scientology you'd better read Althouse's treatise on it."

Why? Does she have some sort of insight into why I should stop believing that Scientologists are phony self-serving anti-psychiatry nutjobs?

"Psychiatrists were the most honored in the Nazi party. No wonder Germans hate Scientologists!"

I think this might be more logical, even if, possibly, no less mistaken: Nazism and Scientology are stealth false religions which prey upon hapless individuals' darkest fears and hatreds. Historically, millions of Germans have suffered for having been duped by false evil faddist religions. No wonder many modern Germans are suspicious of new religions and the celebrity adherents who tout them.; 9/14/07, 12:47 PM
Maxine Weiss said...: Germans are the last people who ought to be persecuting, and trying to drive ANYONE out of their country.

You'd think they'd have learned by now.; 9/14/07, 1:33 PM
Dust Bunny Queen said...: Now, when we can't deal with normal active children; we drug them and give them chemical lobotomies. So much better, doncha think. (sarcasm)

You might be being sarcastic, but yes -- it IS much better. The most obvious way in which it is better is that you can stop giving the kid drugs. You can't unlobotomize someone

My sarcasm is because I think we are needlessly (in many cases) drugging our children instead of dealing with their behaviours. It's much easier to drug or lobotomize away the problem instead of dealing with it. Drugs can also cause permanent changes in the brain. You can't undo that damage either.

In addition I don't believe that there actually is the level of ADD or whatever other acronyms that children are being diagnosed with today. I'm not denying that there are some children with these syndromes. Unruly boys and girls have been around for centuries without being drugged or lobotomized and parents have been able to deal with it.

We have become a people that wants to take the easy way out. So if little Johnny is disruptive in class, he gets drugged. So much easier to deal with a disruptive boy (very few girls are diagnosed and drugged)when he has been chemically lobotomized.; 9/14/07, 1:35 PM
John Stodder said...: The fact that a stepmother -- described in such negative terms -- seemed to play a big role in the lobotomy decision plays into the kind of archetypal fears you find reflected in Grimm's folk tales.

My son is being raised by a stepmother -- my wife -- and I swear, she's not evil, even though she is a persnickety housekeeper.; 9/14/07, 3:33 PM
raf said...: "Living with the knowledge that your parents procured a lobotomy for you."

Actually, I would think that if the lobotomy were well and thoroughly done, you wouldn't be all that concerned....

Other people might be, however.; 9/14/07, 3:34 PM
Maxine Weiss said...: Weren't the Germans obsessed with cleanliness and keeping a tidy house ..... ???; 9/14/07, 3:39 PM
Meade said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 9/14/07, 4:47 PM
Meade said...: The surname Weiss is, what, Korean.....???; 9/14/07, 4:49 PM
blake said...: There's a calculus I wouldn't want to do: a few thousand lobotomies versus a few million drugged kids.

Though if you think just stopping the drugs stops all the effects, you might want to do a little more research.; 9/14/07, 6:53 PM
Revenant said...: There isn't much research into the question of whether the use of behavioral drugs on children does them long-term harm.

However, the empirical evidence -- or rather, LACK of evidence -- strongly suggests that it doesn't. Drugs like ritalin have been in wide use long enough for the original subjects to have grown to adulthood. No surge in adults with mental problems has been detected. This suggests that the drugs don't, on the whole, do any lasting harm.; 9/14/07, 9:53 PM
dick said...: I wonder how you would do the research on what the kids would grow up to be like with out the drugs. Unless you can do that then the fact that the adults have no mental problems really doesn't answer the question as to the long-term result of drugging the kids. It might dull their sense to the point that they do not perform as adults to the best of their natural abilities and so society is deprived of what they might be capable of becoming. That is why I am against drugging them so much.; 9/15/07, 2:02 PM
blake said...: Well, there is some evidence it has precisely that effect. Not limited to Ritalin most likely.

There was some push for a while to suggest that ADD/ADHD kids had brain abnormalities, based on MRIs done. But those differences only appeared after the kids had been on drugs for a while. So that seems to have disappeared. (But you can probably find a cite on a site out there somewhere.); 9/15/07, 4:16 PM
Trumpit said...: Parents who think that lobotomizing children is unthinkable have no qualms about multilating their infant boy's genitals via circumcision. How dare you! I want my foreskin back! In what landfill is it buried or to what medical lab was it sent? Doctors and hospitals love the procedure because they make extra money. Butchers!! How dare you mess with my sex organ! How dare you!! If I could lobotomize all the culprits, I would. And why is the procedure permitted by law? The law is an ASS!; 9/16/07, 3:03 AM