Lobotomy
In May 1941 The Saturday Evening Post ran an article which described a then new form of surgery called psychosurgery. Psycho surgery was described as “…cutting into the brain to form new patterns and rid a patient of delusions, obsessions, nervous tensions and the like.” Lobotomy is a form of psychosurgery which was practiced for more than twenty years, most frequently on women, and has since become a word which is nearly synonymous with barbarism. More than 20,000 were performed in the United States by the early 1950s, more than 50,000 by the time they stopped.
The belief was that by cutting away certain contacts within the brain the mental disorder being treated would be eliminated. The frontal lobes of the brain control cognitive function and the expression of emotions, solving problems, judgment, memory, and other functions of personality. Lobotomies disconnect the prefrontal cortex from the anterior portion of the frontal lobes.
The procedure was recognized to sacrifice personality in the patient in the hope of obtaining relief from mental disorder, and even in those operations deemed successful significant negative results occurred as well. Some symptoms of mental disorder were removed but physical and mental problems were added in nearly all cases. One American physician, Dr. Walter Freeman, performed over 4,000 lobotomies, with nearly 40% of them intended to “cure” homosexual behavior. Freeman referred to lobotomies as “surgically induced childhood.”
One of the most famous patients to undergo a lobotomy was Rosemary Kennedy, the eldest daughter of Joseph Kennedy Sr. and the sister of John F. Kennedy. Rosemary suffered oxygen deprivation at birth and as a result was not as intellectually capable as her siblings. As a teen she developed a stormy and rebelliously headstrong personality. At the request of her father, Dr. Freeman performed a lobotomy on her in 1941. Rosemary became equivalent to a toddler in mental capacity and capability and was institutionalized following the procedure, remaining so for the rest of her life, although she visited the family compound occasionally following the death of Joseph Kennedy Sr.
Lobotomies led to many patients needing to relearn how to eat or even use the bathroom, as in the case of Rosemary Kennedy, who became incontinent following the surgery. Concerns about the negative effects of the procedure outweighing any benefits led the Soviet Union to ban them in the 1950s. By the 1970s several American states had banned the procedure. Although the lobotomies as performed in the 1950s are no longer performed in the United States there are similar procedures being used today.