The Lobotomist: A Maverick Medical Genius and His Tragic Quest to Rid the World of Mental Illness [Paperback]

Jack El-Hai (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 9, 2007 | ISBN-10: 0470098309 | ISBN-13: 978-0470098301

The Lobotomist explores one of the darkest chapters of American medicine: the desperate attempt to treat the hundreds of thousands of psychiatric patients in need of help during the middle decades of the twentieth century. Into this crisis stepped Walter Freeman, M.D., who saw a solution in lobotomy, a brain operation intended to reduce the severity of psychotic symptoms. Drawing on Freeman’s documents and interviews with Freeman's family, Jack El-Hai takes a penetrating look at the life and work of this complex scientific genius.

The Lobotomist explores one of the darkest chapters of American medicine: the desperate attempt to treat the hundreds of thousands of psychiatric patients in need of help during the middle decades of the twentieth century. Into this crisis stepped Walter Freeman, M.D., who saw a solution in lobotomy, a brain operation intended to reduce the severity of psychotic symptoms. Although many patients did not benefit from the thousands of lobotomies Freeman performed, others believed their lobotomies changed them for the better. Drawing on a rich collection of documents Freeman left behind and interviews with Freeman's family, Jack El-Hai takes a penetrating look into the life of this complex scientific genius and traces the physician's fascinating life and work.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Set against the backdrop of changing attitudes toward mental illness in the 20th century, El-Hai's scholarly biography of Dr. Walter Freeman is a moving portrait of failed greatness. Born to a distinguished family of physicians, he rose to become one of the most celebrated doctors of his generation. Best known as the doctor responsible for the widespread adoption of lobotomy in America after WWII, he also made signal contributions to the science of medicine through his career-long involvement with George Washington University Medical School and St. Elizabeth's Hospital in Washington, D.C. Yet, despite his achievements, the procedure he helped develop and tirelessly champion would ultimately become his undoing. As physicians sought other, less drastic means to treat mental illness, Freeman's unorthodox methods, which often included an ice pick and carpenter's hammer, came to seem barbaric. When he died in 1972, the sharply negative view of psychosurgery expressed in books like One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1962) had become commonplace; a mere decade later, movies like Frances (1982) would openly portray lobotomy as institutionalized torture. Although the title of El-Hai's biography might suggest otherwise, he eschews such lurid oversimplifications and portrays Freeman in all his human complexity. To this end, he chronicles Freeman's crusade to help millions of asylum patients who might otherwise remain incarcerated indefinitely; his indefatigable postoperative commitment to his patients; and his flamboyant personality and macabre sense of humor in and out of the operating room. El-Hai's book succeeds as both an empathetic, nuanced portrait of one of America's most complex public figures and as a record of the cultural shifts that have occurred in the treatment of mental illness over the last century.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Scientific American

Few words conjure up more gruesome connotations than "lobotomy"—surgically severing the brain’s frontal lobe in an attempt to relieve intractable psychiatric symptoms. And yet these operations—first performed in the U.S. in 1936 by psychiatrist and neurologist Walter Jackson Freeman and neurosurgeon James Winston Watts—continued for more than 40 years. In that time, Freeman, the procedure’s champion, cut the brains of 3,500 people. Biographer Jack El-Hai chronicles lobotomy’s reign through Freeman’s quest to treat mental illness surgically. The tale follows this son and grandson of prominent physicians from his youth in Philadelphia during the early 1900s through his rise and eventual fall in national prominence. Freeman emerges not merely as a maniacal devotee of radical "psychosurgery" but as an earnest advocate of potential treatments for otherwise intractable mental illness. Most of Freeman’s work took place when state psychiatric hospitals overflowed with seemingly untreatable patients, many of whom suffered relentlessly. Effective psychiatric medications were not yet available, and lobotomy became a measure of last resort. El-Hai describes how neurosurgeons experimented to transform the complicated prefrontal lobotomy into the simpler transorbital lobotomy—nearly an outpatient procedure in which a physician entered a patient’s brain through a region above the eye with an ice-pick like tool. A skilled practitioner could perform a transorbital lobotomy in minutes. Surprisingly, many of Freeman’s lobotomies were reported as successful, not only by Freeman but also by some patients and their families, who sent hundreds of letters expressing gratitude. Of course, many surgeries failed; Rosemary Kennedy, the sister of President John F. Kennedy who suffered "agitated depression," was left "inert and unable to speak more than a few words," as El-Hai says, and was ultimately institutionalized. In 1950 Freeman and Watts reported that of 711 lobotomies they had performed, "45 percent yielded good results, 33 percent produced fair results, and 19 percent left the patient unimproved or worse off." Not surprisingly, many patients remained confused, disconnected, listless and plagued by complications such as seizures. With the emergence of effective drugs during the 1970s, physicians halted lobotomies altogether The tale of lobotomy’s rise and fall entails far more than one man’s quest to spearhead a dubious surgical method. It is a story of desperation among thousands of patients, families, clinicians and policymakers struggling to manage a population seemingly crippled by illnesses for which there was no help. It is also a worrisome account of physicians groping for solutions to problems that they could not adequately address. In this sense, El-Hai’s treatment of this medical saga is also poignant and illuminating.

Richard Lipkin --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 368 pages
• Publisher: Wiley (February 9, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0470098309
• ISBN-13: 978-0470098301
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.5 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (27 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #390,116 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

24 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A fascinating and horrifyingly true bit of medical history, August 7, 2005

By 

W. H. Jamison, Jr. (Burien, Washington United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Lobotomist: A Maverick Medical Genius and His Tragic Quest to Rid the World of Mental Illness (Hardcover)

Walter Freeman almost singl-handedly created the craze for psychosurgery that was in vogue from the late 1930s until the

mid 1960s. This was a time when "psychosurgery" meant "lobotomy". While lobotomies were invented by Egas Moniz it was Freeman who advanced the research and tirelessly publicised it as the solution to almost all psychological ills.

It would be all too easy for an author to write Freeman off as an uncaring villain of the first order, a Josef Mengele like figure who mutilated the brains of his victims/patients in an attempt to make them conform to societal norms by amputating their personalities. However Jack El Hai presents Freeman as a man desperate to improve the lives of his patients, a self-promoting man, but nonetheless someone who cared. It is this portrayal by El Hai that makes Freeman an even more horrible character. When El Hai describes how Freeman almost obsessively kept in touch with his patients you have to contrast this caring image with that of Freeman performing lobotomies in his office with an ice-pick and then sending the patients home in a taxi. Freeman doesn't come off as a two-dimensional monster, instead he is revealed to be an all to real three-dimensional, deeply and desperately flawed man.

El Hai avoids scrutinizing larger questions such as to what degree lobotomy was used as an instrument of societal control of troublesome individuals, but others have speeculated on that question, instead he provides new englightenment on that issue by examining Walter Freeman and his times.

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The mind of a Lobotomist, March 8, 2005

By 

Piya Kochhar "Piya" (NY, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Lobotomist: A Maverick Medical Genius and His Tragic Quest to Rid the World of Mental Illness (Hardcover)

Jack El-Hai takes us into the mind of one of America's most complex medical personalities. The Lobotomist explores the life and work of Dr. Walter Freeman who performed thousands of "ice-pick lobotomies" during the 40s and 50s as a way to treat mental illness. Some saw Freeman as a savior with a miracle cure, others saw him as a cold-blooded egomaniac... Jack El-Hai presents him as a tragic and complex soul by giving us an intimate look into his life and career. A brilliant read...especially because it provides such a vivid snapshot of a terrible chapter in medical history!

14 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars More Than a Biography, March 14, 2005

By 

Marx Swanholm (Minneapolis, MN USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Lobotomist: A Maverick Medical Genius and His Tragic Quest to Rid the World of Mental Illness (Hardcover)

I'm not usually a fan of biographies, but I was persuaded to read this one because a friend who's well aware of my preference for fiction recommended it as "just a great story." And that it is. Dr. Walter Freeman, the godfather of the lobotomy, is as intriguing a character as any of the noble but flawed doctor/scientist heroes of classical literature. Driven by ambition and a desire to accomplish great things for humanity, as well as for himself, he scaled the heights of his profession only to be brought low by arrogance and pride.

Jack El-Hai tells Freeman's story with fairness, grace and a novelist's understanding of character and human frailty. I recommend this fine book not only to readers interested in the subject but to anyone who enjoys, as my friend suggested, "a great story."