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––Andrew Solomon, author of The Noonday Demon
"The moment Walter Freeman′s gaze lands on an ice pick in his kitchen drawer, you know you′re in for a rollicking ride. This is the biography not just of Walter Freeman but of the lobotomy, a procedure as bizarre and tragic and compelling as Freeman himself. Impressively researched and even–handed, El–Hai′s book unravels the man inside the monster. A fascinating read."
––Mary Roach, author of Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers
"Vividly written and meticlously reseached, The Lobotomist is a thoughtful and absorbing biography. With skill and grace, Jack El–Hai lays bare the life and obsessions of one of the most controversial figures in American medical history. A terrific read!"
––Dave Isay, award–winning NPR Producer and MacArthur Fellow
"Notorious barely begins to describe the lobotomy, one of the most controversial medical procedures ever known. Jack El–Hai makes its rise understandable at last by bringing to life the complicated, all–too–human doctor who built his career on promoting the lobotomy. This is a lucid and thoughtful account of a remarkable chapter in the history of medicine."
––T. J. Stiles, author of Jesse James: Last Rebel of the Civil War
"Jack El–Hai has written an absorbing, unsettling and cautionary story of the man who sold the lowly ice pick as the surgical solution to the mental illness of tens of thousands of people…. The author, a respected science journalist, started his research assuming that Freeman was akin to Josef Mengele. He ends this book with a nuanced, haunted view of his subject… With The Lobotomist, El–Hai gives his readers a first–class biography and, without saying so, a tutorial in the sober need for professional humility."–– Karen R. Long, Cleveland Plain Dealer
"A moving portrait of failed greatness… El–Hai’s book succeeds as both an empathetic, nuanced portrait of one of America’s most complex public figures and as a record of the cultural shifts that have occurred in the treatment of mental illness over the last century."––Publishers Weekly
"Who would predict that a book about a brutal, discredited brain operation could be such fun? But The Lobotomist IS fun — for those of us whose idea of fun is having our most cherished beliefs turned on their heads. Jack El–Hai has done a masterful job of bringing to life a brilliant, slightly cruel, wholly original scientist whose contribution to the treatment of mental illness has too long been misunderstood."–– Robin Marantz Henig, author of Pandora′s Baby: How the First Test Tube Babies Sparked the Reproductive Revolution --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
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It is easy to forget that as recently as the 1930s no real effective medical treatment for the major mental disorders existed and the best that could be hoped for was to warehouse the mentally ill and hope for spontaneous remission. It is in this context that the author seeks to explicate the emergence of psychosurgery as an attempt to counteract the prevailing sense of therapeutic hopelesness which cast a pall over the many institutions existing at that juncture.
It is clear that without an adequate understanding of the conditions that existed in Psychiatric practice at the time it is impossible to understand why Freeman would seek to promote what seems to be, to the modern mind-set, such an invasive and potentially dangerous procedure. The author conveys well the sense of therapeutic hopelessness that existed at the time and Freeman's desire to re-establish Psychiatric treatment as primarily Medical in it's ambit, as opposed to Psychoanalytic, and thereby bridge the gap between Neurology and Psychiatry.
In this sense, Freeman is seen to be ahead of his time, a harbinger for the modern Psychiatric preoccupation with the biological origins of mental illness. Walter Freeman is shown as standing at a crossroads in the history of psychiatry: one foot placed in the future with his therapeutic optimism and emphasis on the 'brain' (as opposed to the 'mind') as the focus for treatment but also with one foot placed firmly in the past with his casual disregard for the niceties of what would come to be known as 'evidence-based medicine.'
In summary: an interesting, readable and largely sympathetic biography of a man and an era in the history of Psychiatry that presaged the modern era with it's modern treatments.
An intriguing character who believed he was doing his best for the medical world. Genius or madman? You decide...
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