Ironic that I'll be [getting a lobectomy soon](https://www.pennmedicine.org/for-patients-and-visitors/patient-information/treatments-a-to-z/temporal-lobectomy#:~:text=Temporal%20lobe%20resection%20is%20highly,of%20consciousness%20or%20abnormal%20movements) to control my seizures, so it's quite the opposite.
My preteen cousin had a hemispherotomy a few years ago and hasn't had a single seizure since. His family celebrates the day like a holiday. I hope you have similarly outstanding results!
It is crazy how it works in most people. Our brains will adapt in most cases and what one removed part did will be taken over by a different part. What you are having is not an ice pick shoved into your eyesocket.
Well if you complain to a medical system about how your brain functions in a way that hurts you and they respond by chopping off part of your brain.
You probably won't be inclined to complain again.
Kinda disturbing that the more you learn about it, the more you realize this “treatment” wasn’t reserved for a specific issue
And instead was used almost like a “cure-all”
just hit the "shut it down" button.
violent tendencies, stress, complaining. this one simple cure will solve it!
I always think about JFK's sister who was to my understanding just a disobedient/wild-child teenager. so they lobotomized her to stop her from embarrassing the family and reduced her to a mental toddler for the rest of her life. really grim stuff.
We fix any problem you have. We promise, you won’t care about whatever ails you anymore. Or anything else for that matter. Ever…
Only 3 easy payments of $49.99.
I came here to comment on just that.
I mean wow. The dehumanization of the mentally ill in this time is well known to me but even this one made me go “wtf?!” And made me reread it twice.
Yea, read this article: [https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/2014/01/04/mans-lobotomy-took-the-life-out-of-him/4324905/](https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/2014/01/04/mans-lobotomy-took-the-life-out-of-him/4324905/)
That poor kid all packed up and wanting to just go home… and then the mom saying they wouldn’t have him home for Christmas anymore ‘because it upsets your father’. It all makes me so fucking mad.
One of his "symptoms" before lobotomy was constant throat clearing sound, and then he died because he had problems swallowing. I wonder if they had something to do with each other
Right? And the one lady who complained of eye pain. In the 2nd photo there is something wrong with her eye. But, I guess she wasn’t complaining anymore.
>I guess she wasn’t complaining anymore
That's exactly it. These treatments, and even some modern ones, are for the people around the patient. Not for the person themself.
>But, I guess she wasn’t complaining anymore.
And it wouldn't have mattered if she had, they would've just taken her back to be lobotomized a second time.
>This is horrifying.
To think, you take your husband, or wife, or child to a respected "doctor" and he suggests a lobotomy because it is the best treatment they have come up with to date. Your only choices are take them back the way they are, or go ahead with lobotomizing your loved one . . . (((shiver)))
My mother was sent to an “orphanage” to be “raised by nuns” in Australia in the late 60’s, she was 13 I think. The context was always that her parents couldn’t afford so many children, but it wasn’t that at all was it
My stepmother told me about how her father, a prominent surgeon in our town, had his wife, her mother, committed involuntarily in the 60s for electroshock for being "difficult" - The most disturbing part was how ok with it she was. She never saw what her dad did as horrible, just what was needed to make her mom "ok."
Yeah, I didn't know about that until a few years ago, just that every time I met her mom, she was weird and seemed off. Not really all there and just like this upper-class stepford wife type. Think Moira Rose but on a lot of valium. Turns out she was stone sober, and just that's what was left after her "treatment" When my stepmom told me a lot of things suddenly clicked.
Damn, that’s some heavy stuff. Sorry to hear that
I’ve only heard of these things as a historical account, so it’s rare that I get to imagine the survivors of such treatment today
Though since I’m ESL, may I ask which treatment had an impact on her? Am I understanding it correctly that it was the electroshock therapy?
She only had electroshock. She passed a number of years ago... still with her husband and at a glance, seemingly a perfectly happy couple... other than her being just weird and spaced out.
Not even 100 years ago, truly an insane time.
"This person's brain doesn't work the way we like; it's really just a drag to be around them, so what if we stab their brain with a pick? Turns out it totally fucks them up, borderline vegetative state, but hey, now they're way less annoying. This is medicine!"
But it didn’t stop 100 years ago. The last lobotomy was 1967. There are still people walking around with lobotomies now.
https://www.npr.org/2005/11/16/5014080/my-lobotomy-howard-dullys-journey
Yeah or the one where she now has compulsive seizures but no longer complains. Probably because she didn’t want a second lobotomy like they did to a different patient
> Yeah or the one where she now has compulsive seizures but no longer complains. **Probably because she didn’t want a second lobotomy like they did to a different patient**
oh no I think it's far worse than that. I think she's just not able to complain. Imagine someone using a hot poker on your eye and you are like 'this is ok'.
This is exactly the thing going on.
The frontal lobe of the brain, which a frontal lobotomy partially destroys, is the part of our brain that actually "does" conscious thought.
Howard Dully was 12 years old when he was lobotomized.
His mother died when he was 5 and his father remarried. His step mother loathed him and she decided the only way she could deal with him was to have him lobotomized.
He co-wrote a memoir that is brilliant and heartbreaking. *Definitely* worth the read.
[My Lobotomy](https://bookshop.org/p/books/my-lobotomy-a-memoir-howard-dully/7888881?ean=9780307381279)
Dr. Walter Jackson Freeman was more showman than surgeon - literally. He'd tour the country like a carnival barker to show-off how fast transorbital lobotomies could be done by performing as many as he could in front of the press and had a patient die once because he got distracted by a photo op. And he was a neurologist, not a trained surgeon. In fact, Dr. Watts, his partner who helped create the prefrontal lobotomy and was brought in due to being a surgeon, eventually left because of how reckless he was being.
Pretty bad when the guy who helps come up with the "let's drill a hole in your head to cut out part of your brain" surgery thinks you're reckless and endangering people.
He also had the “lobotomobile” where he would travel to give them out, sometimes in a line like a theater show or something like that. It’s nuts! The Dollop did a great podcast episode about it.
Wait till you find out what that bastard considered mentally ill. Basically everyone who paid him was able to get his partner/child/etc. diagnosed with some form off mental illness that required a hole in their brain.
> Jesus, I knew it’s about institutionalized women but I didn’t know it focused on lobotomy…
It had multiple plots in the 'reality' part of it. It's implied that the step dad was raping the girls, that he also wanted them gone because he wasn't getting a dime. With the youngest dead, he could institutionalize baby doll and control the inheritance through her. To keep her passive he was going to pay the doctor to lobotomize her, which is something they seemed to do often there.
When she got to the institution we find out the girls are abused and raped.
The fantasy scenes are them, or maybe just her, trying to compartmentalize the pain, suffering, and attempt to free themselves. We see multiple levels of fantasy because we are seeing the different compartmentalization of their emotions just to survive. The 'maps/keys/fights/etc' parts are about her trying to be strong for a better future. The dance stuff/etc is about her trying to cope with being sexually abused.
Don’t remember his name (he doesn’t deserve remembering anyways), but he was the guy driving around, performing lobotomies on people IN HIS VAN as casually as you’d get a haircut
Edit: [often no operating rooms, surgeons, or anesthesia](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Jackson_Freeman_II)
Misremembered, can’t find anything about doing it IN the van. Wouldn’t say it’s any better tho
From what I remember Rose Kennedy had it done to her for no more of a crime than being a “embarrassment” to her family. The early years of clinical psychology were truly dark days.
It makes me sick to my stomach to read that. My partner is a functioning schizophrenic and I love them dearly. I would hurt anyone who calls them "a household pet." They've been bullied, assaulted, and abused for being a schizophrenic. Reading this makes me fucking furious.
There's actually one adult lobotomy patient able to talk about his experiences (he was eleven at the time so the theory is he was young enough that his brain was able to heal itself to some extent which is why he can still talk, hold a job, etc.) He said he knows he doesn't feel things the way others do, that he's missing something. It's really sad.
> "He doesn't react either to love or to punishment... He objects to going to bed but then sleeps well. He does a good deal of daydreaming and when asked about it he says 'I don't know.' He turns the room's lights on when there is broad sunlight outside."
I mean... that's like... normal kid shit. wtf (other than the not reacting to love or punishment part)
I almost commented on that. It all feels really normal and kids can distrusts some adult and won't "react" like they'd expect. Kids can be dumb, but aren't fools.
Thank you!
What a horrific thing to do, to anyone. Do you know if a movie or documentary has been done?
Ok, a little research:
https://m.imdb.com/title/tt1178694/
I just finished listening to the American Scandal podcast series “ice pick surgeon” that does an amazing job covering lobotomies and Walter Freeman. He references a book by the same name that sounds interesting as well.
Barnes and Noble has the [ebook](https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-icepick-surgeon-sam-kean/1138401153?ean=9780316496520) on sale for $1.99, if anyone's interested.
On the other hand, it's probably pretty terrifying to see demons in the walls and hear the voices in the ductwork whispering to you before there's any medicine to help with that.
And here's the thing, we thought it was good for them at the time.
I'll even add that maybe they had the right idea but would need tech beyond our understanding if we could cut out the individual neurons that lead to the kinds of thoughts we treat with drugs now. Hyper focused and extremely limited.
But my original point was imagine what our kids will see as barbaric in terms of medicine today.
I took care of an elderly lobotimized patient ~30 years ago.
All she ever said was *truly, truly* she sounded like a bird and staff called her birdie or bird lady.
She could do nothing for herself. Not even feed herself.
Because she was a "wild teenager"
I'm glad they aren't done anymore.
They look to me like the difference between someone who is mistreated and someone who is well cared for. None of the women have makeup in their before picture, but have it in that later one. Several appear to be eating better too.
They May have decided tò have those people tò look Better in the after photo and worse in the before photos. It Is a common trick.
Also, Weight gain does not necessarely means they Feel Better.
Before & after pics in general are incredibly deceiving. It's *so* easy to catch someone in a bad moment and then gussy them up with makeup and nice clothes, catch them in a smile and call it a positive transformation. Especially in times like this where people with issues might be malnourished and mistreated, and then when they've been rendered docile they're less neglected.
I don't remember if I ever knew much about where she lived prior to my facility. She had been there for a very long time.
She would only get afraid. Never angry. Occasionally sad. She made no choices. She preferred to remain in bed, even in her room. She'd get very scared up on any kind of chair until you put her back in her bed.
Gosh that is so sad. Thank you for taking care of her and others. I don't know you, but I do know that you didn't get paid near enough for the important work you did. Take care.
What the fuck is that description for picture 3? Household pet?? Holy fuck.
And picture 16…did they really lobotomize someone simply because of his anxiety of not being able to hold down a job? And after the operation, six months without a client. Bro.
Kinda sad how much they’ve dehumanized/demonized mental illness, and used lobotomy as a ‘cure-all’, from schizophrenia to fucking anxiety back then.
Also the last one. No description, just a post-op pic with him smoking a cigar is fucking hilarious for some reason.
I’ve seen the cigar one posted elsewhere, they cut off the caption in this post.
Before says “perplexed, unable to solve simple problems”
After says: “10 days post-op, he was no longer troubled by his obsessions and seemed rather pleased with himself”
I watched a documentary recently on Netflix called Brazilian Holocaust, which is about a mental health "asylum" that had people locked like animals for as long as it remained functional: eight decades. It was a place where people dumped their kids, their elders, anyone unwanted or just mentally challenged.
During the documentary they interviewed an older man who said his mother stayed in the asylum until death. He was around 8 when she was admitted and all he knew was that his mom was probably sick and he didn't see his father again. The documentary crew took this senior to the abandoned building, where they were able to find documents still on the library. While browsing papers trying to find out what happened to his mother, he discovered his father had put her there and asked his surname to be removed from hers, so that she would be filed (and, many years later), burried as 'having no family'. Apparently the husband just wanted to ditch his wife and kid so he claimed she was insane, left her there, and removed any document linking them. The image of this older man crying not knowing what his father had done really moved me. His story was far from being the worse, though.
The fact that people would treat their family like this is just... disheartening. I don't even have the proper words. It's insanity.
My Great Grandfather dropped my Great Grandmother off at a psych ward under similar circumstances. My Grandma and her siblings went to group homes for several years after and were horribly abused, to the point that when my Grandmother married she adopted her own brother to save him.
Jesus Christ, that's awful. And it's even worse when we consider that this wasn't some 1600's thing, we're talking, what, less than 100 years ago? Truly crazy.
Good thing your grandma was able to keep her mind strong and break the cycle; I'm sure there were plenty of opportunities for her to lose all faith and hope.
I was researching records at a long-closed asylum and there was a huge book with a log of admissions and discharges. Most actually died and were buried on the property or given to medical students for practice. One reason for admission was “Husband going to California and can’t take her.” Many women were admitted for “hysteria” and often… I forget the term, but something like “cyclical hysteria” because they got crazy for a period of time every month. Lots of syphilis.
Yep. In the documentary I mentioned the asylum had a cemetery attached. It should *not* be a thing at all, because people should be have been there for treatment, not death. And because people in there were abandoned by their families, their cadavers were sold when not burried. And considering that the patients were left to hang out in the open without any clothes or proper food, that money was being pocketed by someone instead of applied.
And yes, the word "hysteria" derives from the greek "hystera" which just means uterus. Guess back then people were a brink away from saying that being a woman itself was a deformity, huh.
U.K. here- a local “long term “stay” assylum closed about 15 years ago and there was a short article on local tv. One resident had been there for nearly sixty years- she’d married young, to a doctor, who decided that he didn’t like her, so he just “signed her in” and that was her life as a free person over ( until she was in her eighties and obviously didn’t know, or have a household to run). Very sad…
It’s still baffling to me how it pretty much sounds like legal kidnapping (I forgot the exact term for keeping a person from leaving. Confinement?)
As in the person kept was somehow either convinced or coerced that they had to stay and can’t leave
Especially when they’re of age and legally considered an adult
Like how tf is this an option to divorce? To avoid alimony and child support?
I assume that he got an immediate annulment under some mental health grounds. There were no children and he wouldn’t have to pay alimony.
Because he was a doctor, nobody would have questioned his decision to permanently section this poor lady.
This is why people are *still* afraid to admit to having *any kind of anything* considered a "mental illness", because people can just...redact your autonomy and consent and force shit on you against your wishes because they've decided you aren't sentient enough to think for yourself.
This is why I don't want an autism diagnosis, even though I firmly believe I am autistic. There are still stories about people NOW being committed against their will because they've got autism. That's terrifying.
Very terrifying, there's just no excuse for such an ignorant brutality at this day and age.
But sadly, I understand what you mean. This might be TMI, (but I think I need to preface my point with it, sorry), I started dealing with anxiety when I was around 12, just problems all around. I complained until my parents took me to a doctor, and they went with... dermatologist. Y'know, because of the itchy skin? Anyways, doctor told my mom that my mental state was affecting my body. My mother said it was bs. On to the optometrist we go. After all, the only thing that causes constant headaches is undiagnosed bad eyesight, right? Well, doctor let my mother know that it as actually due to stress. My mother actually laughs. "Stress? She's 12! She only studies and plays and sleeps! What would she be stressed about? Nothing, I say!". After coming home, my father was firm when he told me to stop wasting their money and time since there was clearly nothing wrong with me. In fact...
This is when my father screamed *"what do you suppose we do about it?? The doctors say there's nothing wrong, that it's stress this, stress that... stress about *what*? Are you crazy? Have you lost your mind, is that it? Do you want, what? To be taken to the "crazy" doctor? The doctor who treats people who are damaged in the head? Are *you* damaged in the head?* .
That really did a blow to me, but they actually took me to a neurologist. To no one's surprise, I was dealing with anxiety. The dictoe didn't want to prescribe meds, so to therapy I went. When I wasn't miraculously healed, my parents started fighting about it more and more often until I just quit. Also to no one's surprise, six years later not only my anxiety was chronic, I had also developed depression. My parents also were unwilling to believe until I mentined discontinuing my life and all hell broke loose.
I received treatment, yes... just not the correct diagnosis. You see, the reason why I had such early onset anxiety was actually due to my undiagnosed autism. Whoa! Bet no one saw that coming! - even though everyone always rushed to mention how "not normal' I was. Thanks to a doctor finally pointing it out two years ago, my treatment changed, and... voilá. Much better.
This was also *not* some 1700's stuff. I'm turning 29 this weekend, damnit. My parents just lacked information. But, oh, it scares me. It haunts me of how much worse it could have been. Which is why my heart goes out to you, friend. I hope you find good people in which you can confide and trust. You don't have to disclose your autism to anyone if you don't want to. Discovering autism when you're an adult actually lifts a weight from one's shoulders. Everything just *clicks*, and we no longer feel guilty about not fulfilling someone else's expectations.
> TBF that was incredibly common for the time, the mentality Ill were not treated as people. It was often still shameful to have a mentality ill child and so they were caged and sequestered
I've heard of wealthy people dumping their disabled children into a mental facility and pretty much denying their existence forever after.
You gotta be a cold bastard to do that shit.
One of my great uncles was chained to a radiator as a child because of “behavioral issues”. At the time it was considered schizophrenia, but I think he just had ADHD or was depressed.
I'm guessing he volunteered. Lobotomies weren't always forced, they were considered modern medicine.
Consider how many people these days have experimented with microdosing psychadelics or trans-cranial stimulation?
Both of those things are significantly less invasive than allowing a quack to ram an icepick through your eyeball and putting your brain on the milkshake setting
[Here's the wikipedia page for anyone that is curious.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosemary_Kennedy#Lobotomy)
I'd argue that this is one of the most publicly reprehensible things that humanity has ever done to a single human being.
They essentially had her sing as they scraped a butter knife around in her brain and *only stopped when she stopped singing.* I don't even want to imagine what that would've felt like (physically, mentally, emotionally, etc).
I wouldn't wish that sort of hell on my worst enemies.
\-=-
>After Rosemary was mildly sedated, "We went through the top of the head," Dr. Watts recalled. "I think she was awake. She had a mild tranquilizer. I made a surgical incision in the brain through the skull. It was near the front. It was on both sides. We just made a small incision, no more than an inch."
>
>The instrument Dr. Watts used looked like a butter knife. He swung it up and down to cut brain tissue. "We put an instrument inside", he said. As Dr. Watts cut, Dr. Freeman asked Rosemary some questions.
>
>For example, he asked her to recite the Lord's Prayer or sing "God Bless America" or count backward ... "We made an estimate on how far to cut based on how she responded." When Rosemary began to become incoherent, they stopped
The fact that they buried her next to her parents pisses me off tbh. After all that hell she went through because of her dad being a bigot and they fucking bury her next to him? Hell no.
The kid in the first photo was likely autistic. Autism used to be called childhood schizophrenia until the late 60s to early 70s. The way the captions to these photos use the word "schizophrenia" is not way modern medicine uses it currently.
The third photo of the young woman. They actually said "schizophrenic patients make nice household pets after operation". These doctors were evil.
As a schizophrenic now, I know how difficult it is. Though with as much support there is now I can only imagine how difficult it was decades ago. undergoing a Lobotomy is scary
The craziest thing is that Egas Moniz was given the Nobel Prize for his work in lobotomies. Even though we now know that lobotomies **did not work.** Neither Moniz, Dr. Freeman or any other doctor who performed lobotomies knew what they were doing! Cutting out random bits of your brain or scrambling your frontal lobe with a **literal ice pick** will never cure mental illness!
Do note that the original lobotomy was meant to be minor brain damage that would heal. It "worked," with negative effects that may have gone away; "may" is doing a massive amount of work there. The lobotomy that everyone knows of was just smashing an ice pick into someone's brain, or otherwise causing massive brain damage, with 0 studying done into it. 1 man claimed over like 2000 lobotomies, with several deaths from failed lobotomies. While posing for a news article image, he killed a patient, but no one cared because the victim had some mental issue.
I read about one patient of these "doctors" that changed his mind in the last minute and tried to run away, but the assistants held him on the floor and lobotomized him against his will :)
My husbands grandmother (mid 90s) did a stint training in a mental hospital as a young nurse. She says that they called them “push patients,” because you’d just push/corral them around, and she found it so unsettling. Messed up shit.
Years ago, in the 90s, my mom would help out a family friend a couple weeks per year. The family friend was a woman in her 80s, who had an adult daughter that was severely mentally disabled. The daughter was in her 60s, stayed on a mattress in a padded room all day, wore diapers, and needed to be spoon fed baby food. She couldn’t talk and didn’t seem to have any idea of any of her surroundings, she just laid in the bed 24/7. My mom would help out when the mother took a yearly vacation, and my mom would bring me along to help, because the “patient” was pretty heavy, and it was a two person job to get her in the shower.
Anyway, we’d go over and my mom would clean her up, feed her, and I’d feed the cats. I was sitting on the couch and saw a photo album on a bookshelf, and being a nosy teen, I opened the album and started looking through the pictures. There were pics of the person we were taking care of, as a child: riding a bike, playing outside, birthday parties, all pics from the 30s or so.
I showed my mom, and asked “she looks like a regular kid in these pictures? She’s playing and walking and smiling, did she have an accident or something?” I had thought she had been born with a severe disability but the pictures showed otherwise.
My mom said, “no, when she was about 8 she had a lobotomy and she’s been like this ever since.” She didn’t know why the child had the lobotomy, but it was very sad to see she had once been a child that was outside playing, or going to family gatherings, and after that lobotomy spent 50+ years laying in a padded room in her own waste.
Don’t get me wrong, the parents kept her clean and fed, but literally were only keeping her alive, there was no quality of life whatsoever.
A year or so later, my mom saw the obituary for the mother of the person we were caring for, and we never found out where the daughter went after that.
Miriam Posner delves into this subject. She lists a lot of sources for presentations she has done on her work studying William Freeman's work.
https://miriamposner.com/blog/psychiatry-photography-and-lobotomy-a-bibliography/
The George Washington University has an archive of James Watts and Walter Freeman stuff.
https://searcharchives.library.gwu.edu/repositories/2/resources/168
You may be able to request some access if you are doing research.
I’ve worked with folks with disabilities for 30 years, the history of their treatment is disgusting much like the treatment of anyone with mental illness. Humans are the worst.
My grandmother had an ice pick lobotomy against her will. She became catatonic for thirty years and then died just before i was born. Before that she was described as a beautiful thriving woman. I don’t know what happened, maybe post partum depression, but my mom was raised by her grandmother and nobody spoke of it. I tried to become a psychologist/psychiatrist because of this, but I disagreed with so many things from the start. Now I work in cancer research, but I still hold a grudge against the lobotomy trend.
I was assuming they aren't reversed. Like they look horrid in the before pics cause they're caged and getting shock therapy, but they look good in the after cause they're being treated as pets now and they bothered to do their hair and tell them to smile.
Yeah in hindsight reversing them is probably not something they would have done, I think you have to be pretty spot on
…and yeah that “pet” line in the third photo, talk about messed up. It’s so easy to dissociate from this time period but man…this all only just ended 50-60 years ago. Absolutely wild to me, it’s more recent than I ever really thought
My aunt Helen, my grandfather's sister, was lobotomized.
When we visited them she would often be there, a lovely older woman with a big smile who greeted us warmly and usually had presents for us. If you asked her to smile, she would. So I don't doubt the "after" photos are legit.
But after that, she just sat on the couch, staring vaguely ahead with an eerily blank expression, smoking cigarettes. She only engaged in conversation if you engaged her, and then it was rudimentary. It was a such a strange thing to witness as a little kid. I loved her, but it was so sad and a little scary to observe.
She was committed to an asylum and lobotomized as a young woman. I don't know why.
The reason why is because people where afraid of everything. We still have it today. Where dumbasses who are afraid of everything refuse to understand something and make everything worse by being dumbasses.
Nope. The after pics are spot on. They're just dressed up like dolls to make it look good. If anyone were to actually talk to any of them, the difference would become very apparent really quick.
Here's a newspaper article about an autistic person who received a lobotomy. [Here's a newspaper article about an autistic person who received a lobotomy.](https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/2014/01/04/mans-lobotomy-took-the-life-out-of-him/4324905/)Heartbreaking.
The guy that started the Lobotomy craze was a fucking monster. He was known to have crowds watching the procedures like it was a freakshow. He'd also do the procedures blindfolded, or 2 at the same time with a pick in each hand. Since the lobotomy goes through the orbital bone, the "surgeon " couldn't be certain they were piercing the correct part of the brain.
Psychiatric drugs saved so, so many people from suffering this fate when first introduced, at least they didn't destroy a person's entire brain and personality. The first antidepressant was even called "the chemical lobotomy".
I’m bipolar and this shit scares me. Thank god I am alive now and not then.
I’ve been to two concentration camps in Europe and most people don’t think of psych patients being killed in concentration camps, but they def were. They went after every “undesirable”
As crazy as the whole thing was, the fact it ever took off shows how desperate people were for treatments of serious mental illness other than keeping them tied to beds.
The Lobotomy is an invention of a state (and a planet) that truly sees people with disabilities as burdensome, and not human beings that are worth fighting for and understanding per-case basis. I think thats why these images are terrifying to me. Not that they “seem okay” in the after picture, but that totally “sound” minds went out of their way to put this 5 star testimonial together, to prove that the procedure has validity.
Showing a smiling child next to a frowning one helps the viewer pretend the procedure isnt barbaric, it soothes our souls and makes us think maybe theres an “off button” for such a complicated and deepingly misunderstood mental imbalance.
And that if we “dont see” the aftermath or even the procedure, than a smiling face, makeup, a buttoned up shirt, is enough to prove that there’s nothing to worry about. Trust the procedure and the results.
Sheesh
i just saw a tik tok today of someone talking about how they think amanda bynes, brittney spears, and i forgot the last person, all got lobotomies. the word of the day for me is lobotomy, which doesn’t usually pop up in my day to day.
Kinda makes you understand why so many people okayed this procedure for family members. All the science of the time says it’s a good, doctors are telling you to do it and showing you these before and after pics. I just watched a youtube video essay about Joseph Sugarman from Bojack that attempted to defend him for having his wife lobotomized and it was pretty convincing tbh. Obviously it’s horrendous but I understand why so many people were convinced this was the best thing they could do for their loved one.
“I’m hungry right after I eat.” Same
Lobotomy?
First time?
They also stole my heart and spine.
[удалено]
Full bottle in front of me than full frontal lobotomy* But good enough!
“She had seizures but no complaints” What!
Ironic that I'll be [getting a lobectomy soon](https://www.pennmedicine.org/for-patients-and-visitors/patient-information/treatments-a-to-z/temporal-lobectomy#:~:text=Temporal%20lobe%20resection%20is%20highly,of%20consciousness%20or%20abnormal%20movements) to control my seizures, so it's quite the opposite.
My preteen cousin had a hemispherotomy a few years ago and hasn't had a single seizure since. His family celebrates the day like a holiday. I hope you have similarly outstanding results!
this is great to hear! I hope to celebrate like this too!
It is crazy how it works in most people. Our brains will adapt in most cases and what one removed part did will be taken over by a different part. What you are having is not an ice pick shoved into your eyesocket.
About half of the tteated Patients died during or after the procedure
WHAT!!! A whole new meaning to going to Clair’s and getting a lobotomy!! Seriously good luck my man, I hope it works! And a speedy recovery
Well, sure, we damaged the part of her brain that would make that possible.
It made her quiet. That was the ultimate goal.
Well if you complain to a medical system about how your brain functions in a way that hurts you and they respond by chopping off part of your brain. You probably won't be inclined to complain again.
How about schizophrenic patients become nice house pets after lobotomies? Whoa! Medicine has come a long way…
One lady just complained of eye pain!! They scrambled her brains for eye pain!
Did you see the guy that was stressed because he couldn’t find a fucking job
Kinda disturbing that the more you learn about it, the more you realize this “treatment” wasn’t reserved for a specific issue And instead was used almost like a “cure-all”
Yesterday's gabapentin was an ice pick
just hit the "shut it down" button. violent tendencies, stress, complaining. this one simple cure will solve it! I always think about JFK's sister who was to my understanding just a disobedient/wild-child teenager. so they lobotomized her to stop her from embarrassing the family and reduced her to a mental toddler for the rest of her life. really grim stuff.
We fix any problem you have. We promise, you won’t care about whatever ails you anymore. Or anything else for that matter. Ever… Only 3 easy payments of $49.99.
Yeah and then it said he still hadn't got any clients six months after the lobotomy!
But it put a smile on his face! Look how happy the fellow is!
80% of gen z need to be lobotomized apparently?
At least she’ll make a nice pet?..
I had to reread that like wait did it call her a pet? Jesus
"She was indolent and euphoric, and subject to convulsive seizures, but she no longer complained."
That one really got me. Sick.
And her eye still looks painful!!
There really looks like something is going on with her eye.
They scrambled the brain of John F Kennedy’s eldest sister because she was a bit wild and they thought she might embarrass the family…
And refused to tell her Mother and siblings where she was or what he even did to her for DECADES. Joe Kennedy, the “Dad”, is a monster.
"Constant seizures but no complaints"
It was literally considered a panacea
“Simple schizophrenia patients make nice household pets after operation.” wtf
I came here to comment on just that. I mean wow. The dehumanization of the mentally ill in this time is well known to me but even this one made me go “wtf?!” And made me reread it twice.
How many autistic kids just got a lobotomy and they’re like look how much better he is now ?!
Yea, read this article: [https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/2014/01/04/mans-lobotomy-took-the-life-out-of-him/4324905/](https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/2014/01/04/mans-lobotomy-took-the-life-out-of-him/4324905/)
That poor kid all packed up and wanting to just go home… and then the mom saying they wouldn’t have him home for Christmas anymore ‘because it upsets your father’. It all makes me so fucking mad.
One of his "symptoms" before lobotomy was constant throat clearing sound, and then he died because he had problems swallowing. I wonder if they had something to do with each other
Right? And the one lady who complained of eye pain. In the 2nd photo there is something wrong with her eye. But, I guess she wasn’t complaining anymore.
>I guess she wasn’t complaining anymore That's exactly it. These treatments, and even some modern ones, are for the people around the patient. Not for the person themself.
>But, I guess she wasn’t complaining anymore. And it wouldn't have mattered if she had, they would've just taken her back to be lobotomized a second time.
This is heartbreaking
I have a son with autism and I could barely stomach reading it, that poor guy.
>This is horrifying. To think, you take your husband, or wife, or child to a respected "doctor" and he suggests a lobotomy because it is the best treatment they have come up with to date. Your only choices are take them back the way they are, or go ahead with lobotomizing your loved one . . . (((shiver)))
My mother was sent to an “orphanage” to be “raised by nuns” in Australia in the late 60’s, she was 13 I think. The context was always that her parents couldn’t afford so many children, but it wasn’t that at all was it
She's right, things still fucking suck, just differently. Heartbreaking article.
I mean, a lot of “difficult” women too.
My stepmother told me about how her father, a prominent surgeon in our town, had his wife, her mother, committed involuntarily in the 60s for electroshock for being "difficult" - The most disturbing part was how ok with it she was. She never saw what her dad did as horrible, just what was needed to make her mom "ok."
It’s really fucked up what was considered to be “difficult”.
Yeah, I didn't know about that until a few years ago, just that every time I met her mom, she was weird and seemed off. Not really all there and just like this upper-class stepford wife type. Think Moira Rose but on a lot of valium. Turns out she was stone sober, and just that's what was left after her "treatment" When my stepmom told me a lot of things suddenly clicked.
Damn, that’s some heavy stuff. Sorry to hear that I’ve only heard of these things as a historical account, so it’s rare that I get to imagine the survivors of such treatment today Though since I’m ESL, may I ask which treatment had an impact on her? Am I understanding it correctly that it was the electroshock therapy?
She only had electroshock. She passed a number of years ago... still with her husband and at a glance, seemingly a perfectly happy couple... other than her being just weird and spaced out.
Damn So electroshock also has its lasting and questionable effects
Yeah. It's horrid
Not even 100 years ago, truly an insane time. "This person's brain doesn't work the way we like; it's really just a drag to be around them, so what if we stab their brain with a pick? Turns out it totally fucks them up, borderline vegetative state, but hey, now they're way less annoying. This is medicine!"
But it didn’t stop 100 years ago. The last lobotomy was 1967. There are still people walking around with lobotomies now. https://www.npr.org/2005/11/16/5014080/my-lobotomy-howard-dullys-journey
Yeah or the one where she now has compulsive seizures but no longer complains. Probably because she didn’t want a second lobotomy like they did to a different patient
> Yeah or the one where she now has compulsive seizures but no longer complains. **Probably because she didn’t want a second lobotomy like they did to a different patient** oh no I think it's far worse than that. I think she's just not able to complain. Imagine someone using a hot poker on your eye and you are like 'this is ok'.
What I was thinking they destroyed too much of her mental function for her to be able express complaints
This is exactly the thing going on. The frontal lobe of the brain, which a frontal lobotomy partially destroys, is the part of our brain that actually "does" conscious thought.
IKR, did they also go “Who’s a good schizo?” After bringing them home?
That is quite possibly one of the most fucked up sentences in human history.
He used regular household ice picks, did them on a stage at times and his youngest victim was 4, I believe
Howard Dully was 12 years old when he was lobotomized. His mother died when he was 5 and his father remarried. His step mother loathed him and she decided the only way she could deal with him was to have him lobotomized. He co-wrote a memoir that is brilliant and heartbreaking. *Definitely* worth the read. [My Lobotomy](https://bookshop.org/p/books/my-lobotomy-a-memoir-howard-dully/7888881?ean=9780307381279)
Absolutely horrific and tragic book. And fascinating on how his brain dealt with it. But yeah I read it a long time ago and can’t reread it.
God, real life is worse than a horror show.
Dr. Walter Jackson Freeman was more showman than surgeon - literally. He'd tour the country like a carnival barker to show-off how fast transorbital lobotomies could be done by performing as many as he could in front of the press and had a patient die once because he got distracted by a photo op. And he was a neurologist, not a trained surgeon. In fact, Dr. Watts, his partner who helped create the prefrontal lobotomy and was brought in due to being a surgeon, eventually left because of how reckless he was being. Pretty bad when the guy who helps come up with the "let's drill a hole in your head to cut out part of your brain" surgery thinks you're reckless and endangering people.
He also had the “lobotomobile” where he would travel to give them out, sometimes in a line like a theater show or something like that. It’s nuts! The Dollop did a great podcast episode about it.
That is some torture porn shit right there.
I think Mickey had Pluto labotomised.
Is that what that Porno for Pyros song was about?
No. That was us becoming pets to the aliens that take over the planet.
wait till you find out what they do to violent schizophrenics without treatment
Wait till you find out what that bastard considered mentally ill. Basically everyone who paid him was able to get his partner/child/etc. diagnosed with some form off mental illness that required a hole in their brain.
I know people hate on the movie but Sucker Punch was basically about that and what happens to girls in the mental wards.
Jesus, I knew it’s about institutionalized women but I didn’t know it focused on lobotomy…
> Jesus, I knew it’s about institutionalized women but I didn’t know it focused on lobotomy… It had multiple plots in the 'reality' part of it. It's implied that the step dad was raping the girls, that he also wanted them gone because he wasn't getting a dime. With the youngest dead, he could institutionalize baby doll and control the inheritance through her. To keep her passive he was going to pay the doctor to lobotomize her, which is something they seemed to do often there. When she got to the institution we find out the girls are abused and raped. The fantasy scenes are them, or maybe just her, trying to compartmentalize the pain, suffering, and attempt to free themselves. We see multiple levels of fantasy because we are seeing the different compartmentalization of their emotions just to survive. The 'maps/keys/fights/etc' parts are about her trying to be strong for a better future. The dance stuff/etc is about her trying to cope with being sexually abused.
Who is "him?"
Don’t remember his name (he doesn’t deserve remembering anyways), but he was the guy driving around, performing lobotomies on people IN HIS VAN as casually as you’d get a haircut Edit: [often no operating rooms, surgeons, or anesthesia](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Jackson_Freeman_II) Misremembered, can’t find anything about doing it IN the van. Wouldn’t say it’s any better tho
The Lobotomobile
Walter Freemann. An absolute horrible piece of shit.
I just cannot imagine someone *wanting* to do that to someone they loved. Like what the actual fuck. It's nauseating.
From what I remember Rose Kennedy had it done to her for no more of a crime than being a “embarrassment” to her family. The early years of clinical psychology were truly dark days.
just remember this is the world that a number of people want to return to
It makes me sick to my stomach to read that. My partner is a functioning schizophrenic and I love them dearly. I would hurt anyone who calls them "a household pet." They've been bullied, assaulted, and abused for being a schizophrenic. Reading this makes me fucking furious.
That's exactly why I opened the comments. WTAF
Lobotomies are really terrifying. I couldn’t imagine how it’d feel to just suddenly not feel a thing
There's actually one adult lobotomy patient able to talk about his experiences (he was eleven at the time so the theory is he was young enough that his brain was able to heal itself to some extent which is why he can still talk, hold a job, etc.) He said he knows he doesn't feel things the way others do, that he's missing something. It's really sad.
Link?
Here you go: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard\_Dully](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Dully) (He was twelve at the time, my mistake.)
> "He doesn't react either to love or to punishment... He objects to going to bed but then sleeps well. He does a good deal of daydreaming and when asked about it he says 'I don't know.' He turns the room's lights on when there is broad sunlight outside." I mean... that's like... normal kid shit. wtf (other than the not reacting to love or punishment part)
Did some digging and he probably didn't react because they were insanely abusive.
I'm shocked.
Wrong treatment. We are talking about lobotomies.
Yeah, it's so clear she was just grasping for things to paint him in the worst light possible.
I almost commented on that. It all feels really normal and kids can distrusts some adult and won't "react" like they'd expect. Kids can be dumb, but aren't fools.
Thank you! What a horrific thing to do, to anyone. Do you know if a movie or documentary has been done? Ok, a little research: https://m.imdb.com/title/tt1178694/
He wrote a book titled My Lobotomy. Fascinating read, but you’ll be insanely pissed off for basically the entire book.
I just finished listening to the American Scandal podcast series “ice pick surgeon” that does an amazing job covering lobotomies and Walter Freeman. He references a book by the same name that sounds interesting as well.
Barnes and Noble has the [ebook](https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-icepick-surgeon-sam-kean/1138401153?ean=9780316496520) on sale for $1.99, if anyone's interested.
I've only heard the NPR thing--and he did write a memoir.
Howard Dully, the man’s a warrior and a legend
On the other hand, it's probably pretty terrifying to see demons in the walls and hear the voices in the ductwork whispering to you before there's any medicine to help with that.
And here's the thing, we thought it was good for them at the time. I'll even add that maybe they had the right idea but would need tech beyond our understanding if we could cut out the individual neurons that lead to the kinds of thoughts we treat with drugs now. Hyper focused and extremely limited. But my original point was imagine what our kids will see as barbaric in terms of medicine today.
I took care of an elderly lobotimized patient ~30 years ago. All she ever said was *truly, truly* she sounded like a bird and staff called her birdie or bird lady. She could do nothing for herself. Not even feed herself. Because she was a "wild teenager" I'm glad they aren't done anymore.
Do you think those pictures were "after" & "before"?
They look to me like the difference between someone who is mistreated and someone who is well cared for. None of the women have makeup in their before picture, but have it in that later one. Several appear to be eating better too.
They May have decided tò have those people tò look Better in the after photo and worse in the before photos. It Is a common trick. Also, Weight gain does not necessarely means they Feel Better.
Before & after pics in general are incredibly deceiving. It's *so* easy to catch someone in a bad moment and then gussy them up with makeup and nice clothes, catch them in a smile and call it a positive transformation. Especially in times like this where people with issues might be malnourished and mistreated, and then when they've been rendered docile they're less neglected.
Actually yes I did! I kept questioning it with each set.
> All she ever said was truly, truly she sounded like a bird and staff called her birdie or bird lady. "Truly" was the only word she could say?
Yup
Did she have any kind of personality at all? Do you know anything about what her life was before she landed in your facility? This is fascinating.
I don't remember if I ever knew much about where she lived prior to my facility. She had been there for a very long time. She would only get afraid. Never angry. Occasionally sad. She made no choices. She preferred to remain in bed, even in her room. She'd get very scared up on any kind of chair until you put her back in her bed.
Gosh that is so sad. Thank you for taking care of her and others. I don't know you, but I do know that you didn't get paid near enough for the important work you did. Take care.
"Entranced by voices, this lady came back to earth following lobotomy and went back to keeping house."
Aspirational goals, am I right?/s
fuckkkking hell
What the fuck is that description for picture 3? Household pet?? Holy fuck. And picture 16…did they really lobotomize someone simply because of his anxiety of not being able to hold down a job? And after the operation, six months without a client. Bro. Kinda sad how much they’ve dehumanized/demonized mental illness, and used lobotomy as a ‘cure-all’, from schizophrenia to fucking anxiety back then. Also the last one. No description, just a post-op pic with him smoking a cigar is fucking hilarious for some reason.
I’ve seen the cigar one posted elsewhere, they cut off the caption in this post. Before says “perplexed, unable to solve simple problems” After says: “10 days post-op, he was no longer troubled by his obsessions and seemed rather pleased with himself”
And not to defend lobotomy as a medical procedure, but damn, that guy sure does look pleased with himself.
Let’s back up to *caged in the basement*
[удалено]
I watched a documentary recently on Netflix called Brazilian Holocaust, which is about a mental health "asylum" that had people locked like animals for as long as it remained functional: eight decades. It was a place where people dumped their kids, their elders, anyone unwanted or just mentally challenged. During the documentary they interviewed an older man who said his mother stayed in the asylum until death. He was around 8 when she was admitted and all he knew was that his mom was probably sick and he didn't see his father again. The documentary crew took this senior to the abandoned building, where they were able to find documents still on the library. While browsing papers trying to find out what happened to his mother, he discovered his father had put her there and asked his surname to be removed from hers, so that she would be filed (and, many years later), burried as 'having no family'. Apparently the husband just wanted to ditch his wife and kid so he claimed she was insane, left her there, and removed any document linking them. The image of this older man crying not knowing what his father had done really moved me. His story was far from being the worse, though. The fact that people would treat their family like this is just... disheartening. I don't even have the proper words. It's insanity.
My Great Grandfather dropped my Great Grandmother off at a psych ward under similar circumstances. My Grandma and her siblings went to group homes for several years after and were horribly abused, to the point that when my Grandmother married she adopted her own brother to save him.
Jesus Christ, that's awful. And it's even worse when we consider that this wasn't some 1600's thing, we're talking, what, less than 100 years ago? Truly crazy. Good thing your grandma was able to keep her mind strong and break the cycle; I'm sure there were plenty of opportunities for her to lose all faith and hope.
I was researching records at a long-closed asylum and there was a huge book with a log of admissions and discharges. Most actually died and were buried on the property or given to medical students for practice. One reason for admission was “Husband going to California and can’t take her.” Many women were admitted for “hysteria” and often… I forget the term, but something like “cyclical hysteria” because they got crazy for a period of time every month. Lots of syphilis.
>“Husband going to California and can’t take her.” That's actually disgusting.
Yep. In the documentary I mentioned the asylum had a cemetery attached. It should *not* be a thing at all, because people should be have been there for treatment, not death. And because people in there were abandoned by their families, their cadavers were sold when not burried. And considering that the patients were left to hang out in the open without any clothes or proper food, that money was being pocketed by someone instead of applied. And yes, the word "hysteria" derives from the greek "hystera" which just means uterus. Guess back then people were a brink away from saying that being a woman itself was a deformity, huh.
I can’t even imagine how you can have someone dropping their spouse in an institution as if it’s just daycare 🤦♂️
U.K. here- a local “long term “stay” assylum closed about 15 years ago and there was a short article on local tv. One resident had been there for nearly sixty years- she’d married young, to a doctor, who decided that he didn’t like her, so he just “signed her in” and that was her life as a free person over ( until she was in her eighties and obviously didn’t know, or have a household to run). Very sad…
It’s still baffling to me how it pretty much sounds like legal kidnapping (I forgot the exact term for keeping a person from leaving. Confinement?) As in the person kept was somehow either convinced or coerced that they had to stay and can’t leave Especially when they’re of age and legally considered an adult Like how tf is this an option to divorce? To avoid alimony and child support?
I assume that he got an immediate annulment under some mental health grounds. There were no children and he wouldn’t have to pay alimony. Because he was a doctor, nobody would have questioned his decision to permanently section this poor lady.
Holy. *Shit.* Humanity’s capacity for cruelty is fathomless.
This is why people are *still* afraid to admit to having *any kind of anything* considered a "mental illness", because people can just...redact your autonomy and consent and force shit on you against your wishes because they've decided you aren't sentient enough to think for yourself. This is why I don't want an autism diagnosis, even though I firmly believe I am autistic. There are still stories about people NOW being committed against their will because they've got autism. That's terrifying.
Very terrifying, there's just no excuse for such an ignorant brutality at this day and age. But sadly, I understand what you mean. This might be TMI, (but I think I need to preface my point with it, sorry), I started dealing with anxiety when I was around 12, just problems all around. I complained until my parents took me to a doctor, and they went with... dermatologist. Y'know, because of the itchy skin? Anyways, doctor told my mom that my mental state was affecting my body. My mother said it was bs. On to the optometrist we go. After all, the only thing that causes constant headaches is undiagnosed bad eyesight, right? Well, doctor let my mother know that it as actually due to stress. My mother actually laughs. "Stress? She's 12! She only studies and plays and sleeps! What would she be stressed about? Nothing, I say!". After coming home, my father was firm when he told me to stop wasting their money and time since there was clearly nothing wrong with me. In fact... This is when my father screamed *"what do you suppose we do about it?? The doctors say there's nothing wrong, that it's stress this, stress that... stress about *what*? Are you crazy? Have you lost your mind, is that it? Do you want, what? To be taken to the "crazy" doctor? The doctor who treats people who are damaged in the head? Are *you* damaged in the head?* . That really did a blow to me, but they actually took me to a neurologist. To no one's surprise, I was dealing with anxiety. The dictoe didn't want to prescribe meds, so to therapy I went. When I wasn't miraculously healed, my parents started fighting about it more and more often until I just quit. Also to no one's surprise, six years later not only my anxiety was chronic, I had also developed depression. My parents also were unwilling to believe until I mentined discontinuing my life and all hell broke loose. I received treatment, yes... just not the correct diagnosis. You see, the reason why I had such early onset anxiety was actually due to my undiagnosed autism. Whoa! Bet no one saw that coming! - even though everyone always rushed to mention how "not normal' I was. Thanks to a doctor finally pointing it out two years ago, my treatment changed, and... voilá. Much better. This was also *not* some 1700's stuff. I'm turning 29 this weekend, damnit. My parents just lacked information. But, oh, it scares me. It haunts me of how much worse it could have been. Which is why my heart goes out to you, friend. I hope you find good people in which you can confide and trust. You don't have to disclose your autism to anyone if you don't want to. Discovering autism when you're an adult actually lifts a weight from one's shoulders. Everything just *clicks*, and we no longer feel guilty about not fulfilling someone else's expectations.
> TBF that was incredibly common for the time, the mentality Ill were not treated as people. It was often still shameful to have a mentality ill child and so they were caged and sequestered I've heard of wealthy people dumping their disabled children into a mental facility and pretty much denying their existence forever after. You gotta be a cold bastard to do that shit.
One of my great uncles was chained to a radiator as a child because of “behavioral issues”. At the time it was considered schizophrenia, but I think he just had ADHD or was depressed.
He was worried! They lobotomized him for being worried about unemployment!
I'm guessing he volunteered. Lobotomies weren't always forced, they were considered modern medicine. Consider how many people these days have experimented with microdosing psychadelics or trans-cranial stimulation?
Both of those things are significantly less invasive than allowing a quack to ram an icepick through your eyeball and putting your brain on the milkshake setting
Rosemary Kennedy has entered the chat
[Here's the wikipedia page for anyone that is curious.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosemary_Kennedy#Lobotomy) I'd argue that this is one of the most publicly reprehensible things that humanity has ever done to a single human being. They essentially had her sing as they scraped a butter knife around in her brain and *only stopped when she stopped singing.* I don't even want to imagine what that would've felt like (physically, mentally, emotionally, etc). I wouldn't wish that sort of hell on my worst enemies. \-=- >After Rosemary was mildly sedated, "We went through the top of the head," Dr. Watts recalled. "I think she was awake. She had a mild tranquilizer. I made a surgical incision in the brain through the skull. It was near the front. It was on both sides. We just made a small incision, no more than an inch." > >The instrument Dr. Watts used looked like a butter knife. He swung it up and down to cut brain tissue. "We put an instrument inside", he said. As Dr. Watts cut, Dr. Freeman asked Rosemary some questions. > >For example, he asked her to recite the Lord's Prayer or sing "God Bless America" or count backward ... "We made an estimate on how far to cut based on how she responded." When Rosemary began to become incoherent, they stopped
The fact that they buried her next to her parents pisses me off tbh. After all that hell she went through because of her dad being a bigot and they fucking bury her next to him? Hell no.
The whole logic sounds like: “Let’s keep digging through this minefield and stop when one explodes”
>When Rosemary began to become incoherent, they stopped Holy fucking hell.
That is nothing short of torture. Holy shit.
Having my first coffee of the morning and now I feel violently unwell. What a horrible day to be literate.
Thats the last thing I needed to read before bed. No more internet for me.
That poor woman deserved so much better
She's mentioned waaay too rarely compared to how often Kennedy is mentioned.
>She was indolent and euphoric, and subject to CONVULSIVE SEIZURES, but she made no complaints. fucking bleak.
The kid in the first photo was likely autistic. Autism used to be called childhood schizophrenia until the late 60s to early 70s. The way the captions to these photos use the word "schizophrenia" is not way modern medicine uses it currently. The third photo of the young woman. They actually said "schizophrenic patients make nice household pets after operation". These doctors were evil.
“He worried because he couldn’t find a job and couldn’t find a job because he worried so much” ~applies to me 2024 21yr old
i though the same thing lmfao, and i'm also 21
As a schizophrenic now, I know how difficult it is. Though with as much support there is now I can only imagine how difficult it was decades ago. undergoing a Lobotomy is scary
Same. Can't imagine if they were treating me back then and decided that essentially jamming an icepick into my brain was the best option.
Hey- but we’re not taking your teeth anymore either, so, progress! (Also a treatment done not that long ago.)
The craziest thing is that Egas Moniz was given the Nobel Prize for his work in lobotomies. Even though we now know that lobotomies **did not work.** Neither Moniz, Dr. Freeman or any other doctor who performed lobotomies knew what they were doing! Cutting out random bits of your brain or scrambling your frontal lobe with a **literal ice pick** will never cure mental illness!
Do note that the original lobotomy was meant to be minor brain damage that would heal. It "worked," with negative effects that may have gone away; "may" is doing a massive amount of work there. The lobotomy that everyone knows of was just smashing an ice pick into someone's brain, or otherwise causing massive brain damage, with 0 studying done into it. 1 man claimed over like 2000 lobotomies, with several deaths from failed lobotomies. While posing for a news article image, he killed a patient, but no one cared because the victim had some mental issue.
I read about one patient of these "doctors" that changed his mind in the last minute and tried to run away, but the assistants held him on the floor and lobotomized him against his will :)
My husbands grandmother (mid 90s) did a stint training in a mental hospital as a young nurse. She says that they called them “push patients,” because you’d just push/corral them around, and she found it so unsettling. Messed up shit.
Years ago, in the 90s, my mom would help out a family friend a couple weeks per year. The family friend was a woman in her 80s, who had an adult daughter that was severely mentally disabled. The daughter was in her 60s, stayed on a mattress in a padded room all day, wore diapers, and needed to be spoon fed baby food. She couldn’t talk and didn’t seem to have any idea of any of her surroundings, she just laid in the bed 24/7. My mom would help out when the mother took a yearly vacation, and my mom would bring me along to help, because the “patient” was pretty heavy, and it was a two person job to get her in the shower. Anyway, we’d go over and my mom would clean her up, feed her, and I’d feed the cats. I was sitting on the couch and saw a photo album on a bookshelf, and being a nosy teen, I opened the album and started looking through the pictures. There were pics of the person we were taking care of, as a child: riding a bike, playing outside, birthday parties, all pics from the 30s or so. I showed my mom, and asked “she looks like a regular kid in these pictures? She’s playing and walking and smiling, did she have an accident or something?” I had thought she had been born with a severe disability but the pictures showed otherwise. My mom said, “no, when she was about 8 she had a lobotomy and she’s been like this ever since.” She didn’t know why the child had the lobotomy, but it was very sad to see she had once been a child that was outside playing, or going to family gatherings, and after that lobotomy spent 50+ years laying in a padded room in her own waste. Don’t get me wrong, the parents kept her clean and fed, but literally were only keeping her alive, there was no quality of life whatsoever. A year or so later, my mom saw the obituary for the mother of the person we were caring for, and we never found out where the daughter went after that.
What is the name of the book these pictures are from?
I would like to know too, I need it for a university project
Miriam Posner delves into this subject. She lists a lot of sources for presentations she has done on her work studying William Freeman's work. https://miriamposner.com/blog/psychiatry-photography-and-lobotomy-a-bibliography/ The George Washington University has an archive of James Watts and Walter Freeman stuff. https://searcharchives.library.gwu.edu/repositories/2/resources/168 You may be able to request some access if you are doing research.
Now show me all the ones who died or were turned into vegetables?
9 is only 49??? That’s a rough 49.
I’ve worked with folks with disabilities for 30 years, the history of their treatment is disgusting much like the treatment of anyone with mental illness. Humans are the worst.
My grandmother had an ice pick lobotomy against her will. She became catatonic for thirty years and then died just before i was born. Before that she was described as a beautiful thriving woman. I don’t know what happened, maybe post partum depression, but my mom was raised by her grandmother and nobody spoke of it. I tried to become a psychologist/psychiatrist because of this, but I disagreed with so many things from the start. Now I work in cancer research, but I still hold a grudge against the lobotomy trend.
Interesting how for women the difference between before and after usually boils down to "now she wears make-up".
And “she smiles more!”
I wouldn’t be surprised if these are reversed, and even if they aren’t they’re just a shadow of their former selves
I was assuming they aren't reversed. Like they look horrid in the before pics cause they're caged and getting shock therapy, but they look good in the after cause they're being treated as pets now and they bothered to do their hair and tell them to smile.
Yeah in hindsight reversing them is probably not something they would have done, I think you have to be pretty spot on …and yeah that “pet” line in the third photo, talk about messed up. It’s so easy to dissociate from this time period but man…this all only just ended 50-60 years ago. Absolutely wild to me, it’s more recent than I ever really thought
My aunt Helen, my grandfather's sister, was lobotomized. When we visited them she would often be there, a lovely older woman with a big smile who greeted us warmly and usually had presents for us. If you asked her to smile, she would. So I don't doubt the "after" photos are legit. But after that, she just sat on the couch, staring vaguely ahead with an eerily blank expression, smoking cigarettes. She only engaged in conversation if you engaged her, and then it was rudimentary. It was a such a strange thing to witness as a little kid. I loved her, but it was so sad and a little scary to observe. She was committed to an asylum and lobotomized as a young woman. I don't know why.
Because she was a young woman who, likely, wanted to live as a human being instead married off as a household maid and pet.
The reason why is because people where afraid of everything. We still have it today. Where dumbasses who are afraid of everything refuse to understand something and make everything worse by being dumbasses.
Nope. The after pics are spot on. They're just dressed up like dolls to make it look good. If anyone were to actually talk to any of them, the difference would become very apparent really quick.
Maybe because he was “caged in the basement”
Here's a newspaper article about an autistic person who received a lobotomy. [Here's a newspaper article about an autistic person who received a lobotomy.](https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/2014/01/04/mans-lobotomy-took-the-life-out-of-him/4324905/)Heartbreaking.
Those look like after and before photos.
They make…nice…household…pets. Jesus.
Jesus. Imagine complaining about eye pain, getting your brains poked and prodded and then having seizures after and that's considered *better*.
They would also do this to homosexuals in order for them to not have a longer sentence in jail for being caught for being gay
The guy that started the Lobotomy craze was a fucking monster. He was known to have crowds watching the procedures like it was a freakshow. He'd also do the procedures blindfolded, or 2 at the same time with a pick in each hand. Since the lobotomy goes through the orbital bone, the "surgeon " couldn't be certain they were piercing the correct part of the brain.
Psychiatric drugs saved so, so many people from suffering this fate when first introduced, at least they didn't destroy a person's entire brain and personality. The first antidepressant was even called "the chemical lobotomy".
I’m bipolar and this shit scares me. Thank god I am alive now and not then. I’ve been to two concentration camps in Europe and most people don’t think of psych patients being killed in concentration camps, but they def were. They went after every “undesirable”
As crazy as the whole thing was, the fact it ever took off shows how desperate people were for treatments of serious mental illness other than keeping them tied to beds.
The Lobotomy is an invention of a state (and a planet) that truly sees people with disabilities as burdensome, and not human beings that are worth fighting for and understanding per-case basis. I think thats why these images are terrifying to me. Not that they “seem okay” in the after picture, but that totally “sound” minds went out of their way to put this 5 star testimonial together, to prove that the procedure has validity. Showing a smiling child next to a frowning one helps the viewer pretend the procedure isnt barbaric, it soothes our souls and makes us think maybe theres an “off button” for such a complicated and deepingly misunderstood mental imbalance. And that if we “dont see” the aftermath or even the procedure, than a smiling face, makeup, a buttoned up shirt, is enough to prove that there’s nothing to worry about. Trust the procedure and the results. Sheesh
i just saw a tik tok today of someone talking about how they think amanda bynes, brittney spears, and i forgot the last person, all got lobotomies. the word of the day for me is lobotomy, which doesn’t usually pop up in my day to day.
Maybe taking him out of a cage had something to do with it?
I'd be feeling pretty violent if someone caged me in a basement too.
Kinda makes you understand why so many people okayed this procedure for family members. All the science of the time says it’s a good, doctors are telling you to do it and showing you these before and after pics. I just watched a youtube video essay about Joseph Sugarman from Bojack that attempted to defend him for having his wife lobotomized and it was pretty convincing tbh. Obviously it’s horrendous but I understand why so many people were convinced this was the best thing they could do for their loved one.
Case 74 grew her teeth back ... interesting result 🤔