Lobotomy

“The question of identifying which patients might benefit from psychosurgery thus was resolved through a set of filters applied in combination, each of which had been derived from a separate base of experience. From their basic medical training, the doctors at McLean learned how to sort the patients on the basis of current physiology and general classifications of disease. Their more specialized background in psychiatry yielded additional filters concerning the treatment of mental disorders. And the years on the wards at McLean provided an opportunity to observe patients who had undergone the latest innovations in treatment; at the same time, it led to an intimate acquaintance with the everyday affairs of persons who inhabited a very narrow section of the social strata. The decision to operate was formed in the intersection of these various filters, which, added together, demarcated similarities among those patients who did well with the procedure and those who did not. If Mrs. Smith could be sited within the appropriate clinical frame, then her physician proceeded with confidence. It did not matter whether the patient’s ‘emotional tone’ was due to a hormonal imbalance, the delusion that aliens were trying to abduct her, the real fear that her husband might sue for divorce, or a distaste for n institutional life – or all of the above. Her case seemed similar enough to others who had gone before; Mrs. Smith had what a lobotomy was expected to cure” (Pressman, 311-312).