Walter Jackson Freeman II By Cody Kriewald Significance

Walter Jackson Freeman II By: Cody Kriewald

Significance to Psychology Freeman was an american neurologist who is regarded as the single most important cause of lobotomies becoming so popular from the late 1930 s to the mid 1960 s.

Early Life and Background ● Born on November 14 th, 1895 ● Raised in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania ● Family was a wealthy one with a history of medical practitioners in its ancestry ● Grandfather was Williams Keen, Jr.

Williams Keen, Jr. ● Civil war surgeon ● Worked with several presidents o Including secretive work ● Credited as first american brain surgeon

Biography (cont. ) ● Attended Yale College from 1912 to 1916 ● Continued at Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania ● Studied the works of William Spiller during his work there

William Spiller ● Credited by many psychologists as the father of neurology ● Freeman tried to get hired working with him, but failed

Biography (cont. ) ● Moved to Washington D. C. in 1924 ● Began work at St. Elizabeth’s hospital ● Saw suffering of those with mental ailments o Inspired to continue work in neurology ● Finished his Ph. D in neuropathology ● Hired at George Washington University ● Only preceded his “entrepreneurship”

Psychosurgery: Origins ● Less focus on curing physical ailments as on correcting behavioral abnormalities ● Credited to Gottlieb Burckhardt

Burckhardt’s Work ● First performed between 1880 and 1890 ● Worked on same principle of lobotomy ● Removed parts of patients’ brains to alleviate symptoms of mania, dementia, or paranoia

Burckhardt (cont. ) ● Spectacular failure ● One patient died within 5 days and another committed suicide ● Two were unchanged, and the last two became quieter ● Psychosurgery largely taboo for the following couple of decades

Egas Moniz ● True inspiration for Freeman’s lobotomies ● Labeled his surgery the “leucotomy” ● Took cores from patients’ frontal lobes ● Some blame him for the development of lobotomy

Lobotomies Begin ● Changed procedure to separate frontal lobes from thalamus ● Employed James Watts as partner ● First lobotomy one year after leucotomy ● Within the next two month, worked 20 more cases

Transorbital Lobotomy ● Pick is tapped through eye socket and moved back and forth ● Separates the prefrontal cortex and the frontal lobes ● Anesthesia provided by electroconvulsive shock

Lobotomy Becomes a Fad ● No longer required a surgeon ● Performable outside of operating room ● Watts leaves due to overuse

Popularity Spreads ● Almost solely spread because of Freeman ● Drove around in his “lobotomobile” ● Within his 40 years of “entrepreneurship, ” he performed nearly 3, 500

One Personal Account ● Howard Dully received a lobotomy at age 12 ● Given on the direction of his stepmother ● Wrote his account “My Lobotomy”

All Things Come to an End ● Last lobotomy performed on Helen Mortensen ● Her 3 rd lobotomy, as she was a long-term patient ● She died on the operating table

To Counter the Controversy ● Jack El-Hai tries to show a more civilized side ● Works to portray Freeman similarly to some of Moniz’s more moderate critics ● He was only trying to help people since no other treatment existed at the time https: //www. youtube. com/watch? v=_0 a. NILW 6 ILk

Discussion Questions ● Do you think Freeman had his patients’ best interests in mind, or was he simply a great salesman? Keep his showmanship in mind. ● Can you think of any benefits that may have come from this mistake? ● Is this really such a special failure? What about the popularity of trepanation in the past?

Sources Dully, H. , & Fleming, C. (2007). My Lobotomy: A Memoir. New York: Crown. Hai, J. (2005). The lobotomist: A maverick medical genius and his tragic quest to rid the world of mental illness. Hoboken, N. J. : J. Wiley. http: //drs. library. yale. edu/fedora/get/mssa: ru. 0657/PDF http: //www. npr. org/templates/story. php? story. Id=5014576&ps=rs http: //listverse. com/2009/06/24/top-10 -fascinating-and-notable-lobotomies/ http: //projects. wsj. com/lobotomyfiles/? ch=two