Lobotomy & Brain Damage Psychiatry's Legacy by Gene Zimmer

Psychosurgery is a psychiatric practice which creates permanent and irreversible brain damage. It is a brain operation in which healthy brain tissue is intentionally mutilated or removed for the purpose of behavior control.

After a few ill-fated attempts at the turn of the century, Portuguese neurosurgeon Egas Moniz pioneered this psychiatric nightmare in 1935 by stabbing a long, thin blade into the brains of his victims through holes drilled in their skulls. In ironic testimony to the results of his work, Moniz was shot and paralyzed by one of his lobotomy victims in 1939 and, in 1955, was beaten to death by another.

Though Moniz is credited with the "discovery" of the technique, he was preceded by Gottlieb Burckhardt, the superintendent of a Swiss insane asylum, who was the first person in modern times to publish the results of psychosurgery experiments on humans.

Unlike modern psychiatrists, Burckhardt was not restricted by a need to shroud his intentions in euphemistic terms like "therapy," and admitted his aim was that "the patient might be transformed from a disturbed to a quiet clement [insane person]." There was no inention to "help" the patient. The goal was only to eradicate the behavior which others found undesirable.

To achieve this, he removed parts of the brain from six human subjects.

Although one of them died, Burckhardt was not displeased with the results as several of those who lived apparently became easier to handle in the asylum wards which, rather than effecting a recovery of sanity, was his major purpose.

Making docile patients and controllable people is largely the true goal of psychiatric methods. There is no attempt or intention to bring about sanity, happiness, causitiveness or repsonsiblity for the patient. This is obvious by a close study of it's history.

One year after Moniz's 1935 experiment, an American psychiatrist, Walter Freeman, was using a variation whose main "advantage" was the rapidity with which a mind could be destroyed. By plunging an ice pick through the thin layer of bone at the back of the eye socket instead of through holes drilled in the skull, Freeman could achieve the same effect as Moniz in minutes.

During his "career," he performed an estimated 3,500 or more lobotomies, fully aware of the destruction he was causing.

Characterizing lobotomy as "mercy killing of the psyche", Freeman wrote, "patients …must sacrifice some of the virtue, of the driving force, creative spirit or soul." This is not surprising since modern psychiatric theories all but ignore and deny a creative spirit or soul, and more recently deny even the mind itself. Minimally, they completely ignore it in favor of manipulating behavior alone. What good could ever come from a field whose basic theories deny the very things which define man as separate from all other creatures - his mind, spirit and soul? His thoughts, feelings, emotions, hopes and dreams?

Patricia Derian, during the 1940s a student nurse at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, described a typical lobotomy, performed in an amphitheater with witnessing doctors:

"As each patient was brought in, Dr. Freeman would shout at him that he was going to do something that would make him feel a lot better. The patients had been given electroshock before they were brought in; that's probably why he yelled at them. The shock was the only medication they received, he gave them nothing for the pain, no anesthesia, no muscle relaxant.

After the patient was placed on the table, Dr. Freeman would clap his hands and his two assistants would hold up an enormous piece of green felt the color of a pool table. That was the photographic backdrop. Dr. Freeman would direct the placement of lights so that each operation could be photographed, and he checked carefully to be sure that the cameraman was ready, that they had a good angle showing Dr. Freeman with his instrument, that there was no shadow to spoil the picture. His main interest during the entire series of lobotomies seemed to be on getting good photographic angles. He had each operation photographed with the icepick in place.

When all was ready, he would plunge it in. I suppose that was part of his surgical technique, if there's a technique for such surgery. You probably have to plunge it in to break through the back of the eye socket. He lifted up the eyelid and slid the icepick-like instrument over the eyeball. Then he would stab it suddenly, check to be sure the pictures were being made, and move the pick from side to side to cut the brain."

Notice what psychiatry does. It renames brutal procedures as "surgery", using "technique" and medical "instruments". The guy slammed an ice-pick into the brains of living human beings! That is the simple truth of it. All else is playing with words and meaning. Calling this a "cure" for anything is delusional.

Scheflin and Opton in The Mind Manipulators state that 100,000 people received lobotomies between 1946-1955, with half of the operations occurring in the U.S.

The lobotomy victim’s "sacrifice" was substantial. Psychiatrists Franz Alexander and Sheldon Selesnick noted that through psychosurgery:

"an area essential to the human being - his personality - is forever destroyed".

Technically, lobotomy refers to the surgical cutting of nerve connections between the frontal lobes and the rest of the brain. The frontal lobes are unique to human beings and are the seat of the higher functions such as love, conern for others, empathy, self-insight, creativity, initiative, autonomy, rationality, abstract reasoning, judgment, future planning, foresight, will-power, determination and concentration. Without the frontal lobes it is impossible to be "human" in the fullest sense of the word; they are required for a civilized, effective, mature life. Depending on the amount of damage done, the effect can be partial or relatively complete. In a complete lobotomy, the patient becomes obviously demented with the deterioration of all higher mental functions.

Lobotomist P. MacDonald Tow wrote in 1955:

"Possibly the truest and most accurate way of describing the net effect on the total personality is to say that he is more simple; and being more simple he has rather less insight into his own performanace. The mental impairement is greater in the higher and more peculiarly human functions. Deprived of their autonomy, initiative, or willpower, their performance is considerably better in a structured situation". -Personality Changes Following Frontal Leukotomy

Obviously, there is no concern for the individual's viewpoint, happiness, success or anything else. The only concern is whether they keep quiet and don't upset the extremely controlled environment of the mental hospitals where the surgeries were originally conducted. A mother said about her daughter, "She is with me in body but her soul is in some way lost. The deeper feelings, the tenderness, are gone. She is hard, somehow." A friend says, "I'm living now with another person. She is shallow in some ways."

Modern psychosurgery sometimes attacks areas beneath the frontal lobes, in the emotion-regulating limbic region. The effects are the same with emotional blunting and a more controllable person. Methods employing electrodes to melt portions of the brain have similar effects with a "weakening of initiative and (the patient's) ability to structure his situation". Simply, people become more robotic after damage to their frontal lobes and limbic region. There is no way to hide the true purpose of this procedure. There never has been and never will be an attempt by psychiatry to help the person "solve" their problems to become a more responsible, attentive, productive and happy person. In fact, brain surgery of this type destroys all chances of ever honestly "helping" a person in the future with a more mentally-directed therapy. The only people who benefit are the surgeons, hospitals and staff who have an easier time handling the person. It's ALL a matter of control and profits.

This barbaric practice is another example of the type of method experimented with and endorsed by psychiatry during it's sadistic development. Look at the results of their methods and don't listen to their PR and authoritarian verbiage. Remember, only 50 years ago an entire country of millions of people (Germany) were indoctrinated into and largely agreed with what was basically a psychiatric-based viewpoint which led to the destruction of over 6 million lives. Sadly, people will believe just about anything. Modern man is certainly not immune to this tendency, especially when psychiatry (as a belief system) has successfully infiltrated all the major colleges, goverment, and social services.

Look into their past and current actions yourself. Learn the truth about their destructive history. Push past all the PR and authoritarian posturing. What sort of depraved logic takes the simple inhumanitarian facts of brain butchery and renames it "therapy", pretending to "help" and "assist" the patient? But this sort of logic IS psychiatry. The psychiatric "profession" then conducts further "research" by destroying different areas of the brain, in differing amounts, using various techniques, and tries to call this "science". It's a sham, which sadly, too many people fall for.

Above all else, do not allow yourself or others to undergo any of their supposed "treatments" for any reason. Brain surgery is an obvious and overt crime against a human being. The practice involves the intentional destruction of sections of the human brain. Today's psychistrist continues along his familiar path of human pain and misery under the guise of "helping". Electric shock is obviously just as insidious as brain surgery, but psychiatric drugs are not so obvious and have been packaged and sold as the new "safe" solution to man's every problem. It is the same game, with the same wolves in sheep's clothing.

Psychiatry's only and entire approach has been the application of force to a human being, whether this force be physical (involuntary commitment, straight jackets, restraints, abuse, torture, brain surgery), electrical (ECT, shock treatments), or biochemical (drugs). The aim is always to alter behavior, forcibly, with no appeal to the person themselves - their mind, thoughts, feelings, hopes, dreams, goals, intentions, responsibility or desires are ignored and even largely denied by modern psychiatric theories and methods.

Stay away from them and their methods. Steer anyone you know away from their methods. Once you honestly look and see psychiatry for what it really is, this will be easy. Psychiatry is a modern day belief system parading as "science".

Say NO To Psychiatry!

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©Gene Zimmer 1999 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED