The only justice that can be served now is that Freeman be remembered for what he was: a cruel, inhuman psychopathic murderer who disguised himself in the garb of the medical practitioner.
The very fact that after killing one of his patients while at Cherokee State Hospital in Iowa (noted in Rad Geek’s article, Freeman was more interested in photo ops that the welfare of his patient) Freeman continued to perform this barbaric procedure is the telltale sign of a psychopath. Any human being with a conscience and empathy would have stopped performing lobotomies there and then.
I have taken the time to post twice (Rad Geek’s commentary is moving and completely justified in its frank nature) because I am so supremely disgusted by the actions of this man. There can be no excuses for Freeman’s actions, time cannot soften the judgment that must surely be rendered for Mr. Freeman.
]]>Had justice been served Freeman would have been tried and convicted for multiple murders (not to mention the tens of thousands of barbaric procedures he performed on his victims) and he would have served out the remainder of his natural life behind bars.
In terms of human misery I rate Freeman along with some of history’s worst offenders, the aforementioned Josef Mengele for one.
The only justice that can be served now is that Freeman be remembered for what he was, cruel and inhuman.
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]]>First, prefrontal lobotomies were not primarily developed for treating severe depression at all. They were developed for treating incurable psychosis. Most lobotomists recognized how damaging lobotomies could be, but claimed that even the risk of that damage was better than continuing to live with schizoprehnia. I think that prefrontal lobotomies should never have been used, not even for schizophrenia. But historical accuracy does require you to recognize that Freeman was unique, and became something of an embarassment to institutional psychiatry towards the end of his career, because he peddled lobotomies as a brain-damaging snake oil for every kind of psychological complaint. The idea that lobotomies should be used at all for affective disorders like depression was more or less his invention, and even his fellow psychiatrists, who were by no means models of humane concern for their patients, thought that his evangelical hucksterism was terrible medicine.
Second, I do not accept the premise that most of Freeman’s patients willingly and knowingly accepted the procedure.
First, there is the question of will. Besides the documented cases in which Freeman forced radical neurosurgery on unwilling victims, you also have to consider Freeman’s actions within the context of a psychiatric system in which the so-called patients
were both socially and legally under the control of doctors, wardens, family, and other privileged guardians.
This happened when the so-called patients
were children (as in the case of Howard Dully) and also in the cases where family members could easily gain control over them through legal proceedings to have them declared insane.
Lobotomies were routinely performed in psychiatric settings where doctors had direct coercive control over patients and where patients’ choices,
even when they were solicited at all, were given against a backdrop of really sadistic means of intimidation such as insulin-coma and camphor-shock therapies.
Patients who were not in psychiatric hospitals already had to make choices under with the constant, threatening possibility of institutionalization hanging over their head. Morally, there is a distinction to be made between choices that are directly coerced, and choices that are only constrained by background intimidation. But medical professionals have an ethical duty not to exploit either kind of constraint on their patients.
Second, there is the question of knowledge. Freeman routinely sold his procedure, to prospective patients, their families, and other medical professionals, on the basis of claims that were backed by no scientific evidence, claims that amounted sometimes to unfounded bullshit and sometimes to outright lies. The patients, under duress already, without a medical background, and hoping for the miracle cure that the huckster Dr. Freeman extravagantly peddled, had no reasonable way of determining what it actually was that they were signing on for. Freeman, for one, did not tell them what happened to his patients. Often he did not really even try very hard to find out.
For a excellent, if harrowing, overview of both these issues — the effective torture of mental patients
in the United States during the darkest days of institutional psychiatry, the junk science that invoked to support each new miracle cure,
and the wilful disregard for informed consent that psychiatrists routinely practice even today — I’d like to suggest you read Robert Whittaker’s book, Mad in America: Bad Science, Bad Medicine, and the Enduring Mistreatment of the Mentally Ill (2002). The book discusses Freeman and his lobotomizing at some length, alongside other brain-damaging therapeutics
that were popular in the middle of the 20th century.
I, for one, would be the last person to deny that severe depression is a terrible thing and that people suffering from it are often quite desparate. There was no cure
for severe depression in Freeman’s day. In fact, there is no cure
for severe depression today. (Part of the problem is that severe depression
is not one terrible thing, but many different terrible things with quite different causes, etiologies, and effects, that are bundled together in spite of not having much to do with each other.) I do not know what doctors should have done when faced with suffering patients in the 1940s or 1950s. But I do know that one of the things they should not have done was jab a fucking icepick into the patients brains and swing it around, on the off chance that prefontal lobe damage might help control symptoms rather than destroying the patient’s personality and crippling her mentally. I also know that they should not have lied to patients and families, or gone on destroying other people’s lives without any scientific evidence that what they were doing had any positive effects. There is absolutely no excuse for being so cavalier about other people’s lives and well-being. There is no excuse today, and there was no excuse at the time, either.
many people freeman lobotomized we willing and ready to take on the possible outcome of the procedure. yeah ok some of these people tried to back out and were forced into it and i will admit that was wrong, but think about it, these people had no other hope! we didnt have a cure for depression back then so what were the depressed people to do, live their life in misery. i could go on with that point but i wont. these people faced uncureable diseases, if you had cancer and were certained to dire within a month you bet your ass you would try everything possible to help cure you disease. yes the procedure is barbaric to us today, but back then it wasnt as big of a deal.
]]>I run a board on psych reform and am talking to a producer from the PBS show “American Experience” who are soliciting stories from family members of people who have been lobotomized. I’ve got a running narrative on my board, including my efforts to get the medical records from 2 state hospitals in Minnesota, especially Hastings Asylum, where my Nana spent over a decade, it’s almost impossible of course, sans court order, but I’m covering all the bases from here in Texas; I just have to ask like this and look for someone who can point the way to success…
I’m tossing the line to anyone I’ve seen publish meaningful content on psych rights (and you do!); today I’m asking if you know of any instances where blood relatives were able to obtain release of medical records from institutions that performed lobotomy in the mid-1900s. A chance in a mil I know, but that’s how you win the lottery.
Cheers!!
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