Howard Dully - My Lobotomy - Unabr. - 64kbps MakeGreatMusic.Net

Aprrox. 9 hrs. read by Johnny Heller

Book Description

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A gut-wrenching memoir by a man who was lobotomized at the age of 12.

Assisted by journalist/novelist Charles Fleming, Howard Dully recounts

a family tragedy whose Sophoclean proportions he could only sketch in

his powerful 2005 broadcast on NPR's All Things Considered. "In 1960,"

he writes, "I was given a transorbital, or 'ice pick' lobotomy. My stepmother

arranged it. My father agreed to it. Dr. Walter Freeman, the father

of the American lobotomy, told me he was going to do some 'tests'. It

took 10 minutes and cost 200 dollars." Fellow doctors called Freeman's

technique barbaric: an ice pick–like instrument was inserted about three

inches into each eye socket and twirled to sever connections from the

frontal lobe to the rest of the brain. The procedure was intended to

help curb a variety of psychoses by muting emotional responses, but

sometimes it irreversibly reduced patients to a childlike state or (in

15 percent of the operations Freeman performed) killed them outright.

Dully's 10-minute "test" did neither, but in some ways it had a far

crueler result, since it didn't end the unruly behavior that had set

his stepmother against him to begin with. "I spent the next 40 years

in and out of insane asylums, jails, and halfway houses," he tells us.

"I was homeless, alcoholic, and drug-addicted. I was lost." From all

accounts, there was no excuse for the lobotomy. Dully had never been

"crazy", and his (not very) bad behavior sounds like the typical acting-up

of a child in desperate need of affection. His stepmother responded

with unrelenting abuse and neglect, and his father allowed her to demonize

his son and never admitted his complicity in the lobotomy; Freeman capitalized

on their monumental dysfunction. It's a tale of epic horror, and while

Dully's courage in telling it inspires awe, listeners are left to speculate

about what drove supposedly responsible adults to such unconscionable

acts.