My Lobotomy: A Memoir [Audiobook, CD, Unabridged] [Audio CD]

Howard Dully (Author), Charles Fleming (Author), Johnny Heller (Narrator)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 14, 2007

A gut-wrenching memoir by a man who was lobotomized at the age of twelve.Assisted by journalist/novelist Charles Fleming, Howard Dully recounts a family tragedy whose Sophoclean proportions he could only sketch in his powerful 2005 broadcast on NPR's All Things Considered.“In 1960,” he writes, “I was given a transorbital, or ‘ice pick' lobotomy. My stepmother arranged it. My father agreed to it. Dr. Walter Freeman, the father of the American lobotomy, told me he was going to do some ‘tests.' It took ten minutes and cost two hundred dollars.” Fellow doctors called Freeman's technique barbaric: an ice pick–like instrument was inserted about three inches into each eye socket and twirled to sever connections from the frontal lobe to the rest of the brain. The procedure was intended to help curb a variety of psychoses by muting emotional responses, but sometimes it irreversibly reduced patients to a childlike state or (in 15 percent of the operations Freeman performed) killed them outright. Dully's ten-minute “test” did neither, but in some ways it had a far crueler result, since it didn't end the unruly behavior that had set his stepmother against him to begin with.“I spent the next forty years in and out of insane asylums, jails, and halfway houses,” he tells us. “I was homeless, alcoholic, and drug-addicted. I was lost.” From all accounts, there was no excuse for the lobotomy. Dully had never been “crazy,” and his (not very) bad behavior sounds like the typical acting-up of a child in desperate need of affection. His stepmother responded with unrelenting abuse and neglect, and his father allowed her to demonize his son and never admitted his complicity in the lobotomy; Freeman capitalized on their monumental dysfunction. It's a tale of epic horror, and while Dully's courage in telling it inspires awe, listeners are left to speculate about what drove supposedly responsible adults to such unconscionable acts.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Johnny Heller brings the tale of Dully's childhood lobotomy to life in this rugged, clear-cut autobiography. Heller perfectly captures Dully's San Jose accent, adding a grain to words to give a slightly raspy tone. Detailing the author's troubled, often heartbreaking childhood, Heller narrates at a surprisingly swift and unrelenting pace, resulting in an even stronger portrayal of Dully's story as he opts not to hammer each tragic occurrence into the listener's mind. Rather, Heller relates the story in matter-of-factly, as Dully never pauses to mourn his painful adolescence, but chooses to include as much information as he possibly can while speaking of his own experiences. Dully's honest story never pleads for the audience's sympathies, but firmly demands their attention. Heller does not disappoint as he relates this intriguing and painful tale.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

About the Author

At twelve years old, Howard Dully was one of the youngest patients to receive an “ice pick” lobotomy. Today, he is a tour bus driver living in California. Former Newsweek correspondent and Vanity Fair contributor Charles Fleming is coauthor of the New York Times bestsellers Three Weeks in October: The Manhunt for the Washington D.C. Serial Sniper and A Goomba's Guide to Life, and the author of the Los Angeles Times bestseller High Concept: Don Simpson and the Hollywood Culture of Excess and the novels The Ivory Coast and After Havana. He lives in Los Angeles. Johnny Heller has won two prestigious Audie Awards and has earned numerous Audie nominations. He has been praised for his adult, personal development, history, comedy, and children's book narrations. Named a Best Voice of 2008 and 2009, as well as one of the Top 50 Narrators of the Twentieth Century by AudioFile magazine, Johnny has earned almost twenty Golden Earphones Awards . Two of Johnny's audiobooks have been picked by AudioFile as Best Audiobook the Year, and he has won two Publishers Weekly Listen-Up Awards.

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Product Details

• Audio CD
• Publisher: Tantor Media; Unabridged edition (November 14, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1400135362
• ISBN-13: 978-1400135363
• Product Dimensions: 6.7 x 6.5 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,533,907 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars WOW, October 5, 2011

By 

Reid - See all my reviews

This review is from: My Lobotomy: A Memoir (Audio CD)

While I was reading this book I experienced happiness, sadness, joy, anger, frustration, confusion but most of all Hope. Hope in the human's ability to rise above the atrocities that society will place on them. I found myself amazed that the medical profession could embrace such practices as described in this book and that society would allow that profession to get away with it. The sad part is that the mental health profession continues to demonstrate similar practices that are focused on "controlling" people rather than helping them get better. We need more people like Howard to speak up about what has happened to them so that the treatment approaches are forced to change.