“My Lobotomy” is a sad and emotional story that follows the life of Howard Dully. Howard Dully wants to be loved, praised, and cherished like any other child in the world. He seeks approval and acceptance from his stepmother Lou, but no matter what he does she dismisses him like someone would a bug. The questions that need to be addressed are; why is Howard considered abnormal, why did he get pushed aside, why was he treated so bad when his brothers were favored. What Howard had to face is not something any child or adult should ever have to go through. What affect did Lou have on little Howard that shaped him into the withdrawn child, troubled teen, and substance dependent adult? Lou is where the problems truly start for Howard. Lou is his …show more content…
stepmother who married his dad after Howard’s birthmother died giving birth to his youngest brother. Lou would come over to help take care of the boys while Howard’s father worked but eventually they decided to get married and after that it was all over for Howard. He now had two stepbrothers and one of his brothers living in the home with Lou and his father. Lou would look normal to everyone she would see outside of their home, but once the door closed and she was alone, the façade would fall away. According to the book that Howard Wrote about his life story; Lou had a rough time at home while she was growing up.
That followed her into adulthood and took that lifestyle out on Howard. Howard would be punished by Lou for reason that are unspeakable. For example she would spank him for eating if it wasn’t breakfast, lunch, or Dinner. He was only allowed to eat three times a day and if he ate more he got punished. Lou ran a tight ship everything had its place and everything had to be scrubbed perfectly clean. She was so annul about cleanliness that she would inspect Howard and his brother’s buttocks and genitals to make sure they were clean down there. If they weren’t she would then wipe them up herself. It was Howard that got spanked or hit in the head if he was ever dirty down there. This would be considered OCPD (Obsessive-Compulsive Personality Disorder). The obsessive-compulsive personality disorder is a mental condition that have a person so into thinking rules, orderliness, and needing to be in control, (Medicine, …show more content…
2015). Even though OCPD occurs most often in men, it can happen to women as well. OCPD can be caused by family genetics, lifestyle, and environment. This explains why Lou always needed to be in control of every situation and when she knew she couldn’t control Howard, she found a doctor that would believe her about Howard’s aggressive, erotic, and terrifying behavior. She said she felt threatened for her life, which was untrue. It was a side effect of the mental disorder because she needed to find a way to get her calm and organized environment back to where it was before Howard came to live there. Howard was a sweet and quiet child but then he started to get older. His dad was never around and Lou never wanted him around unless she needed to take out her anxiety. She suffered from massive anxiety but she did it to herself. She suffered from OCPD so having Howard another little boy in her home upset her organization which caused her to have anxiety issues that would enhance her anger, increase her aggression, and assumed that Howard was out to harm her. Lou would make things up and make it sound worse then what really happened. She would beat him, hit him with objects, and then Howard’s father would come home between jobs and she would tell him what Howard did, so then Howard got it again. With Howard being pushed aside and excluded from everything he started to withdraw from people and his surroundings. If his brothers were outside playing; Howard would go to the other side of the yard and cry while he sang. Howard was a lonely child that developed depression at a very early age due to the neglect and abuse. The depression wasn’t constant it would come and go depending on the situation. When he was first removed from his home and put in a mental hospital to be evaluated it was the environment change, then led to him hearing once again you don’t belong here. Then it was with a foster family where he finally found out what it was like to be loved. His father refused to sign custody over to them so once again he was let down. This would be referred to as situational depression meaning that it happens when major events happen in someone’s life, (Health, 2015). The thing with situational depression it can turn into major depression which it does for Howard once he gets older. Reading through Howard’s life story, he really was a normal kid that did everything his brother’s did, but he was the one punished. It was after his stepmother Lou had a lobotomy done on Howard did he officially change to the abnormal title. Lou has always been abnormal even when she was a child. Lobotomies were done on people with certain mental disorders but to be honest the only thing that Howard might have suffered from at that young of age was the starting of depression and ADHD. ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder) is when children have a hard time focusing and paying attention, difficulty controlling behavior, and hyperactivity. His not being able to pay attention in school or getting bored with schoolwork was more than likely influenced by the environment in which he lived. The environment wasn’t friendly. He was constantly stressed and overthinking every situation when it came to his home life. He was more worried about what Lou was going to do to him every day then his schoolwork. He didn’t get the help at home, he was never truly shown how to feel emotion besides for fear. That was why it was so hard for Howard to adapt as he got older. He would write bad checks not knowing at first that it was illegal, but then he kept doing it because the police knew he had a lobotomy and assumed that is what caused him to act and behave the way he did. Due to Lou not getting help for her disorders it caused life to be ten times worse for Howard. Lou threatened to divorce his dad if Howard came home from the hospital which he didn’t belong at. Howard never knew stability so it made it hard for him to adapt when he became an adult. He never learned responsibility so he would spend his money randomly, have unsafe sex, and even got married just because. He never understood what life was supposed to be like because he never got to see the true meaning of life. Over the years of feeling worthless it started to eat at Howard’s subconscious and eventually led him to give up for a while. He would work odd jobs just to make enough money for his next fix. All of Howard’s symptoms for being abnormal were caused from his childhood. He was emotionally abused on a daily basis. Isolated because he was getting to big to spank so Lou would send him to his room to sit by himself and at dinner he wasn’t allowed to eat with the family because Lou didn’t like the way he chewed his food. Lou never really ignored Howard but rather used him as her personal punching bag. Even when her kids did something wrong or broke one of her rules Howard would be the one punished. It even came down to verbal insults by calling him dumb, stupid, and so many horrid names, (Association, 2013). When Howard finally was an adult and trying to take care of himself with very little knowledge on how to do that.
He discovered alcohol, it numbed him, made him feel empowered, and calm. According to some of the research located, children who suffer from physically and emotionally abuse do tend to turn to substance abuse for a coping mechanism, (Dueldignosis, 2015). Even if Howard didn’t know what he was doing when he first started drinking and doing drugs it was the crowd that he hung out with. It is proven that if friends suffer from substance abuse it is easy for a child that suffered from emotional and physical abuse to fall into the crowd of addiction because they already feel self-doubt and low self-esteem, (Dueldignosis,
2015). Lou would have Axis 1 because she suffers from OCPD, anxiety, and depression. In parts of her life the way she could go from extremely happy to mad in three seconds could be considered a manic episode, (Psyweb.com, 2015). In parts of the book when Howard would talk about Lou she sounds like she would suffer from bipolar depression. After one of her manic episodes she would have this cool down stage where she would be drained and never considered her actions bad. It was like she was a different person and then she was fine. Howard would be considered to have Axis II because he was very dependent. He had to be because he didn’t really know how to care for himself. He never thought of the outcome for himself or what consequences his actions held. He had a dependent personality because he always expected his dad to come bail him out when he was in trouble, depended on friends to bail him out, and depended on his relationships with a lot of women, (Psyweb.com, 2015). Howard never really knew how to stand on his own two feet. Howard’s story could have been different if Lou never would have married his father. Yeah they would have moved around a lot and never had a stable home, but it’s better than being abused physically and mentally that lead to a lobotomy. Howard has learned to live with the life he had with Lou but sometimes he has a hard time remembering certain things from his childhood. Could be that his brain blocked it out or the lobotomy erased some of the memories. Howard now lives happily with his wife in southern California has two sons that he cares. He took the way Lou treated him and made sure not to be that way to his sons.
Lobotomies were traditionally used to remedy patients with psychological illnesses and behavioral disorders; in the 1950s, they were mainly phased out and substituted with medications, talk therapy, and other methods of dealing. As an overall decree, lobotomies are not carried out today, and many people reason that they are essentially quite brutal. When performed effectively, a lobotomy could bring about significant behavioral modifications for the patient. For psychotic patients, lobotomies were sometimes favorable, relaxing the patient so that he or she could live a somewhat average life. Lobotomies are also notorious for producing a lifeless affect and general reduced responsiveness; this was viewed as an advantage of the lobotomy over all by some supporters of the surgery. Nonetheless, lobotomies can in addition go very wrong. The brain is a tremendously elusive and very intricate organ, and in the era when lobotomies were performed, people were not familiar with much about the brain, as they did not have the assistance of a wide variety of scientific equipment to visualize the brain and its behaviors. At its worst, a lobotomy could be fatal, but it could also cause severe brain damage, ensuing in what was in essence mental retardation of the patient. Patients could also fall into comas and persistent vegetative states after lobotomies. The lobotomy is now thought
Being exposed to his family’s drinking and violence influence him in a profound way. He will grow up to think that leading a chaotic life is acceptable in society. He is doomed to become an alcoholic himself if his parents do not wake up from their substance abuse haze and get him away from such a negative environment. Children who grow up with addicted parents are predisposed to becoming addicts themselves. According to Robert Priedt, author of Many Alcoholics Suffered Childhood Trauma, “patients being treated for alcoholism were likely to have experienced one or more types of childhood abuse or neglect” (Priedt). He also found that a history of emotional abuse was associated with an increase in the likelihood of the patient having depression. This is important concerning that while Victor is not being physically or sexually abused, he is forced to live in an unhealthy environment. This is a form of emotional abuse. Aside from that, Victor is neglected the basic necessities such as food and safety. With his family constantly under the influence and fighting, they do not have time to give Victor the emotional support that a child desperately needs to grow into a functioning member of society. He is also growing up poor. This is not always a bad thing. In fact, some people that grow up in poverty learn the best coping skills and grow to be resourceful,
“The harmful use of alcohol is a global problem which compromises both individual and social development. It results in 2.5 million deaths each year. An intoxicated person can harm others or put them at risk of traffic accidents or violent behavior, or negatively affect co-workers, relatives, friends or strangers. Thus, the impact of the harmful use of alcohol reaches deep into society.” This is a scary statistic which figuratively states that every thirteen seconds someone dies in a death related to alcohol. CBS news reported that more than 30 percent of American adults have abused alcohol or suffered from alcoholism at some point in their lives. This is a staggering number which is widely overlooked because alcohol is legal. Those who suffer feel helpless and trapped by their addiction being unable to stop and quit on their own. Thankfully a man named, Bill Wilson, lead a group of men to write how to become set free from the slavery of addiction.
I was impacted by Dave Pelzer’s book, “A Child Called It” (1995) emotionally and cognitively, due to the nature of abuse the author experienced, it’s heartbreaking to hear a mother renouncing her son, her flesh and blood, a child she carried for nine months; nurtured
Consumption of alcohol affects children in many negative ways. Jeannette Walls and her siblings have faced an abundance of obstacles thrown at them by their father. Despite his major flaws, Jeannette still views him as the person she used to admire. But because of
In the article “Children of Alcoholics” produced by the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy, the author explains the negative effect of parental alcoholism on their children’s emotional wellbeing, when he writes, “Children with alcoholic parents are more likely to experience symptoms of anxiety and/or depression, antisocial behavior, relationship difficulties, behavioral problems, and/or alcohol abuse. One recent study finds that children of drug-abusing fathers have the worst mental health issues (Children of Alcoholics 1). Walls reflects upon her childhood experiences in which her father would become drunk and not be able to control his behavior, as she writes, “After working on the bottle for a while, Dad turned into an angry-eyed stranger who threw around furniture and threatened to beat up Mom or anyone else who got in his way. When he’d had his fill of cussing and hollering and smashing things up, he’d collapse” (Walls 23). The Walls children, who frequently encounter their father’s abusive behavior, are affected mentally in the same way that national studies have shown. Jeanette Walls describes how, after drinking, her father’s behavior becomes cruel and intolerable through his use of profanity, threats, and angry, even violent, actions. In a conventional family, a parent has the responsibility of being a role model to influence their children in a positive way as they develop. Unfortunately, in the Walls family and other families with alcoholic parents, children are often subject to abuse and violence, which places them at risk, not only physically, but mentally. Rex’s irrational behavior when he is drunk is detrimental to the children’s upbringing, causing them to lose trust in their parents, have significantly lower self-esteem and confidence, and feel insecure. Rex’s behavior contributes to Jeanette’s
“When Dad went crazy, we all had our own ways of shutting down and closing off…” (Walls 115).In Jeannette Walls memoir, The Glass Castle, Walls enlightens the reader on what it’s like to grow up with a parent who is dependent on alcohol, Rex Walls, Jeannette’s father, was an alcoholic. Psychologically, having a parent who abuses alcohol is the worst thing for a child. The psychological state of these children can get of poorer quality as they grow up. Leaving the child with psychiatric disorders in the future and or being an alcoholic as well.
The boy only wanted attention from his father. The greatest depiction of Frankenstein’s gluttonous, self-indulgent negligence is that of his child’s first moments of life. It takes but a night to steer his creature to the path of destructive apathy. Frankenstein has no care for those around him, and should never have been given the secret to life, considering his lack of interest in family and his obvious disregard for the laws of nature, creating life; and of man, withholding information of a dangerous being. Victor abuses his son with words and neglect and then wonders why his creature acts out harmfully towards others.
3.3% of Americans are diagnosed with Antisocial Personality disorder. It’s 70% more common in males than females and is seen greatly in Daisy only ate her father’s rotisserie chicken and would organize strips of chicken. When she was done she’d put the chicken bones under her bed. This shows she has OCD because she had taste aversions toward foods that were not her father’s chicken, and compulsively organized and kept the chicken. She also had anxiety as she was supposed to be taking valium which is for controlling anxiety.
Severe mood swings, violent rages, memory loss—each of these problems were a part of my family life during the past two or three years. These problems are the result of alcoholism. Recently, a member of my family realized his abuse of alcohol was a major problem to not only himself, but also to those around him. He would lose control of his temper and often would not even remember doing it the next day. Alcohol became a part of his daily life including work, home, and any other activities. His problem was that of a "hidden" and "high-society" alcoholism. When he was threatened with the loss of his job and the possibility of losing his family, this man knew it was time to get help. After he reached his lowest point, he took the first step towards recovery—admitting his problem.
The crippling effects of alcoholism and drug dependency are not confined to the addict alone. The family suffers, physically and emotionally, and it is the children who are the most disastrous victims. Frequently neglected and abused, they lack the maturity to combat the terrifying destructiveness of the addict’s behavior. As adults these individuals may become compulsively attracted to the same lifestyle as their parents, excessive alcohol and drug abuse, destructive relationships, antisocial behavior, and find themselves in an infinite loop of feelings of emptiness, futility, and despair. Behind the appearance of calm and success, Adult Children of Alcoholics often bear a sad, melancholy and haunted look that betrays their quietest confidence. In the chilling silence of the darkest nights of their souls, they yearn for intimacy: their greatest longing, and deepest fear. Their creeping terror lives as the child of years of emotional, and sometimes physical, family violence.
In the novel Frankenstein, the monster is deserving of empathy because as a young child he did not have the guidance nor care from a parent or guardian like most people do. He was brought into the world and then cruelly rejected by the ...
Our childhood makes up who we are today. Childhood experiences can deeply affect our behaviors and curiosity for alcohol at a young age. ...
“For every family that is impacted by drugs, there are another 10 to 15 families impacted by alcohol abuse. It's a pretty big deal. We have a tendency to only look at part of the puzzle.” (Kevin Lewis). As a society we tend to categorize the severity of addiction in a way that drugs are the most dangerous and alcohol being just a problem. Because alcohol addiction can be a slow progressive disease many people don’t see it in the same light as drug addiction. An addiction to drugs is seen as being a more deadly and dangerous issue then that of alcohol because a drug addiction can happen more quickly and can kill more quickly. Alcohol is something that is easy to obtain, something that is found at almost every restaurant. People with an alcohol addiction can not hide from alcohol as easy as a drug addict. Approximately 7 million Americans suffer from alcohol abuse and another 7 million suffer from alcoholism. (Haisong 6) The dangers of alcohol affect everyone from children with alcoholic parents, to teenagers who abuse alcohol, then to citizens who are terrorized by drunk drivers.
..., common are divorces and, sometimes, loss of parental rights. Most victimized here are children, who do not, yet, have much understanding of similar situations, and that, effects in impaired ability to trust people and feel safe, later on in their life. What else, next to the family situation, collapses in a long-term alcohol abuser’s life? Alcoholics are antisocial; they do not want to let anyone thru a wall they built around themselves. With time, they lose friends. Important matter is that alcohol dependents lack feelings of responsibility, so they become less effective at work. Their credibility drops and they are no longer valued workers – they lose their jobs.