My Lobotomy, A Memoir
Book Review

MY LOBOTOMY BOOK SYNOPSIS

A scathing tale of abuse and circumstance. My Lobotomy is one man's quest for answers to a horrific "transorbital or 'ice pick' lobotomy" (preface) performed on him as a child of 12 during the 1960s.

Dully, somehow miraculously alive and not brain damaged, is the first survivor to come forward and expose, in astonishing detail, his case history of the entire event.

Transorbital "Ice Pick" Lobotomy
Dr. Walter Freeman, father of the American lobotomy, performed over 2500 operations during the mid twentieth century. This was a time when the treatment of mental illness was brutal and almost criminal. The book traverses the authors 56 years of life and his eventual healing and peace after a disastrous life of shame.

QUEENIE B SAYS

This is a story of Survival told with heartbreaking simplicity. It's a story that questions how in America, only 50 years ago, could such horror and brutality exist in the medical community. While reading I felt such a sense of sadness and rage at the same time. This young normal kid, Howard Dully, is living under abusive circumstances. His personality is perhaps a bit anxious but considering he lost his mother when he was 4, and was then raised by an intolerable, anal stepmother who hated him and an emotionally void father, when all is said and read, by today's standards he was essentially a pretty good kid.

And Lobotomy! I mean what's that?!

It was legal to stick an 8 inch long metal ice pick with sharp blades through the eye sockets and into the brain and then literally slide the instrument around to scramble frontal brain tissue. Sounds like something the Germans did in WWII prison camps! The big question here is how did this happen in our culture?

I felt as if this Dr. Freeman was a legal serial killer of his time and he had fun doing it as he says before he died.

The book is disquieting and unnerving. I mean hey, I grew up in the 60's and was ADHD, good thing I had decent parents! In the end, Dully shows his soul is strong and his ability to endure a lifetime of shame and abuse makes him resilient. He finds peace and a voice "for the other victims who are locked away and could not go on this quest. He speaks for them all." (256)

It's a good read.

MY LOBOTOMY DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

1. How could this happen in our own country during the 1960's?
2. Do you think that Dully was a candidate at the time for a Lobotomy?
3. Was a lobotomy, in your opinion, a valid operation?