Lobotomies: A Brief Summary And Analysis

Lobotomies were procedures famously performed by a man known as Dr. Walter Freeman. Publicly he was seen as an amazing doctor that cured the mentally ill, but in reality he killed multiple people because he insisted on taking a picture during the procedure whether it endangered his patients or not. “For some reason the the ice pick began to slide down into the patient’s brain. He died without ever regaining consciousness” (p.71). This procedure should’ve been exposed like Taylor Swift was by Kim Kardashian. Howard suffered through the death of his mother when he was young and was only told that she was coming back, not that she was actually dead. This lead him to think that his mother abandoned him. His father than married a crazy woman who

had a personal vendetta against Howard.
Howard was an easily bored kid and when he got bored he ended up in trouble.

“I never got into trouble. Well, usually I didn’t, except when I was bored” (p.53). He even admits that when he got bored he would steal things. Stealing was the only really bad thing he would do, but for Lou if Howard didn’t listen he was bad. “You could get yelled at for yelling, for fighting, for coming home late from school, for not doing your homework, for losing your homework, for getting your school close dirty, for talking back, for not having proper table manners, and for any number of other things” (p.23). With Howard being such a rambunctious kid and these rules about every tiny thing there was a slim chance to none that Howard wasn’t going to get in trouble. Lou would even get so mad that she would physically hurt Howard. Lou plays a huge role in why Howard acted out. If she would have been less strict and didn’t try to make Howard’s life so miserable he more than likely wouldn’t have gotten the lobotomy. When Lou started looking for doctors to help figure out what was wrong with Howard most of them said that she was the one who needed help and not him. “But all of six of the psychiatrists, I found out later, said my behavior was normal. Four of them even said the problem in the house was with her. They said she was the one who could benefit from treatment”

(p.59).
Howard did not deserve this unnecessary procedure. If he were living in today’s time as an adolescent he more than likely would have been diagnosed with ADD or ADHD. Lou was the only problem this young boy had. If she wouldn’t have been out to get him Howard wouldn’t have felt that anything he did was going to get him punished. It’s so sad knowing that people had to suffer through such a terrible thing. Luckily Howard was someone who wasn’t tremendously affected by it, but because he was operated on that makes one stop and think how many of these procedures weren’t actually needed?