Foo - My lobotomy

My coworker told me about this book she just finished reading, "My Lobotomy." It's a true story of this guy who was lobotomized at the age of 12 by this SHRINK with what amounts to an ice pic. :twitchy: I read nearly the entire book last night, I got it at the library. Absolutely riveting:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5014080

wut? :wtf:

There was a movie about the subject, had a blond chick, maybe 30 years ago. Seem to remember the doc in the asylum played a cop on a show. Mother sent here there as a crazy, but she wasn't...

Movie was Frances with Jessica Lange

Rosemary Kennedy - wiki

In 1941, when Rosemary was 23, her father was told by her doctors that a cutting edge procedure would help calm her "mood swings that the family found difficult to handle at home". [2] Joseph Kennedy gave permission for the procedure to be performed by Dr. Walter Freeman, the director of the laboratories at St. Elizabeth's Hospital in Washington, D.C., together with his partner, James W. Watts, MD, from the University of Virginia. Watts performed his neurosurgical training at the Massachusetts General Hospital, and later he became the Chief of Neurosurgery at the George Washington University Hospital. Highly regarded, Dr. Watts later became the 91st president of the Medical Society of the District of Columbia. The procedure in question was a lobotomy.

At the time only 65 previous lobotomies had been performed. Dr. Watts, who performed the surgery while Dr. Freeman supervised/observed, described the procedure:

We went through the top of the head, 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 put questions to Rosemary. For example, he asked her to recite the Lord's Prayer or sing "God Bless America" or count backwards. ... "We made an estimate on how far to cut based on how she responded." ... When she began to become incoherent, they stopped.

—James W. Watts [3]
Instead of producing the hoped-for result, however, the lobotomy reduced Rosemary to an infantile mentality that left her incontinent and staring blankly at walls for hours. Her verbal skills were reduced to unintelligible babble. Her mother, Mrs. Rose Kennedy, remarked that although the lobotomy stopped her daughter's violent behavior, it left her completely incapacitated. "Rose was devastated; she considered it the first of the Kennedy family tragedies."[4]

Freeman went on to perform more than 3,000 lobotomies[5] before his license to practice medicine was revoked (because of the death of a patient). Such lobotomy treatments are now discredited by the mental health and medical communities, and the procedure is no longer used.


[edit] Aftermath
In 1949, Rosemary moved to the St. Coletta School for Exceptional Children (formerly known as St. Coletta's Institute for Backward Children) in Jefferson, Wisconsin, a residential institution for people with disabilities. Because of the severity of her mental condition, Rosemary became largely detached from the Kennedy clan, but she was visited on regular occasions by her sister Eunice Kennedy Shriver, the founder of the Special Olympics and an advocate for the disabled on Rosemary's behalf. Joe Kennedy also made monetary donations to philanthropic agencies that he founded to help people with developmental disabilities.

Occasionally, Rosemary was taken to visit relatives in Florida and Washington, D.C and to visit her childhood home on Cape Cod, Massachusetts.

Publicly, she was declared to be mentally handicapped. This was more socially acceptable in a political family than a failed lobotomy. "Only a few doctors who worked for the Kennedys knew the truth about Rosemary's condition, as did the FBI", because of a background check of Joe. Joe's attorney told them she had a "mental illness". [6]


[edit] Death
Rosemary died from natural causes on January 7, 2005, at the Atkinson Memorial Hospital in Fort Atkinson, Wisconsin, at the age of 86, with her two surviving sisters Eunice Kennedy Shriver and Jean Kennedy Smith, and her only surviving brother Senator Ted Kennedy by her side. She was the fifth of the Kennedy children to die, but the first to die from natural causes. Although news reports indicate that Rosemary was buried in Holyhood Cemetery in Brookline, Massachusetts, the cemetery will not confirm burial. There is no discernible grave marker.

wow. I'm a republican now - thanks!:rolleyes:

wow. I'm a republican now - thanks!:rolleyes:

You should be so lucky,... I'd pay for the procedure. :)

The movie with Jessica Lange was based on the Fanny Brice story...........

You should be so lucky,... I'd pay for the procedure. :)

so, you're saying turning republican is like being lobotomized?:p

so, you're saying turning republican is like being lobotomized?:p

negative,... I'm saying in your case, whatever it takes,.......

God knows you could use a lobotomy for many reasons than just your politics,... am I right? :)

Surgery or no, pgoat is the best.

okay, just so's we agree I'm still the best afterward:)

This was a fairly common treatment for mental illness up until relatively recently, as was sterilization. Not to invoke Godwin but Hitler borrowed a lot of ideas from our sanitariums and from our government regarding dealing with our "undesirables," (Native Americans.) Another good book in this vein is The Nazi Doctors by Robert Jay Lifton. This book will turn you back into a Democrat. Actually, just reading books will turn you into a Democrat. :lol:

"We made an estimate of how far to cut based on how she responded"

:twitchy:

half lobotomies and spherical lobotomies are not uncommon these days, with drug slinging docs and other messed up stuff.

I was suggested one by two different doc in two different states, or what amounts to a pace maker to help with my seizures. my family disapproved, so did I. The side affects where not worth it or the recovery., then most of the side affects now are not either.

I dont know if i post about spending a week recently in the hospital because they gave my dilantin after being told several times not to.

The movie with Jessica Lange was based on the Fanny Brice story...........

Is that the same lady as Frances Farmer? I have the book and I thought that's what Luddite was talking about.

Sorry if it's the same person :)

This is what they apparently did to Frances Farmer:


America’s “foremost psychosurgeon” who developed the transorbital lobotomy (a treatment which only required the lifting of the eye lid and the insertion of an ice pick to tear into the brain).

Sick sick stuff.....

......

The book is by Howard Dully, not Frances Farmer (who dat?)

I found it shocking he was lobotomized in 1960. I was under the mistaken impression that lobotomies were done in the 19th century or something. His fracking witch of a step mother hated him and this quack Freeman lobotomized him through his fracking eye socket. A TWELVE YEAR OLD KID.