In many of the psychology classes I teach, I find an opportunity to discuss the history of the lobotomy. I might do this in the context of a larger discussion of the history of treatments for mental illness, or as part of a discussion about the pitfalls of using case studies as the sole basis for the development of any particular treatment.

The lobotomy was initially developed by Egas Moniz. Some have argued that he developed this treatment based solely on his analysis of a single case study of a chimp that had received a prefrontal lobe lesion--but the truth is much more complex. It seems that his analysis of patients with frontal lobe dysfunction also played an important role in his decision to use the lobotomy as a treatment for severe mental illness. Note the use of the word "severe": Moniz recommended that the lobotomy only be used when all other treatment options had been exhausted, and when the patient was in considerable distress.

Walter Freeman took Moniz's work (Moniz won the Nobel Prize for his development of the prefrontal lobotomy) and made it into a quick and dirty treatment that could be performed in the back rooms of doctors offices with limited resources: a long metal rod (the "ice pick") and a mallet. Anyways, I won't rant any longer on this. It is easy to find information on the internet about the history of the lobotomy. Here is a good essay. The point of this post was to note that one can now watch a snippet from a PBS video of the Freeman-Lobotomy story on Youtube.com. I have embedded one of those snippets below:

The entire program can be found on PBS.