| Length | 22:41 |
| Licensor | Sound Portraits |
| Producer(s) | Piya Kochhar, Dave Isay |
| Formats | Documentary |
| Topics | Family, Health, Historical |
| Produced | November 16, 2005 |
| Added to PRX | December 2, 2005 |
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One man's quest to uncover the hidden story behind the lobotomy he received as a 12-year-old child.
With help from Larry Blood and Jack El-Hai. The editor was Gary Covino. Pictures of Howard Dully, a history of lobotomy, and other stories of people who underwent the procedure can be found at our website soundportraits.org.
Major Funding for My Lobotomy was provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. With additional support from the National Endowment for the Arts.
English
On January 17, 1946 a psychiatrist named Walter Freeman launched a radical new era in the treatment of mental illness in this country. On that day he performed the first-ever transorbital or "ice pick" lobotomy in his Washington, D.C. office. Freeman believed that mental illness was related to overactive emotions, and that by cutting the brain he cut away these feelings....
Freeman was equal part physician and showman and became a barnstorming crusader for the procedure. Before his death in 1972, he performed ice pick lobotomies on no less than 2500 patients in 23 states.
One of Freemen's youngest patients is today a 56-year old bus driver living in California. Over the past two years he has embarked on a quest to discover the story behind the procedure he received as a 12-year-old child.. A warning: some of the material broadcast in the following documentary may not be suitable for children.
