Lobotomy Nation

This book tells the story of one of medicine’s most (in)famous treatments: the neurosurgical operation commonly known as lobotomy. Invented by Portuguese neurologist Egas Moniz in 1935, lobotomy or psychosurgery became widely used in a number of countries, including Denmark, where the treatment had a major breakthrough. In fact, evidence suggests that more lobotomies were performed in Denmark than any other country. However, the reason behind this unofficial world record has not yet been fully understood. Lobotomy Nation traces the history of psychosurgery and its ties to other psychiatric treatments such as malaria fever therapy, Cardiazol shock and insulin coma therapy, but it also situates lobotomy within a broader context. The book argues that the rise and fall of lobotomy is not just a story about psychiatry, it is also about society, culture and interventions towards vulnerable groups in the 20th century.

American Lobotomy: A Rhetorical History takes one of the most infamous procedures in the history of medicine as its subject. Through a close study of representations of lobotomy in a wide variety of cultural texts, American Lobotomy offers a rhetorical history of the infamous procedure and illustrates its continued effect on American medicine. The development of lobotomy in 1935 was heralded as a "miracle cure" by newspapers and magazines, which hoped openly that the "soul surgery" would empty the nation's perennially blighted asylums. However, the miracle cure soon began to fall from favor with the American public, as the operation became characterized as a barbaric practice with suspiciously authoritarian overtones. Only twenty years after the first operation, lobotomists initially praised for their "therapeutic courage" were condemned for their barbarity, an image that has only soured in subsequent decades. Taking on previously abandoned texts like science fiction, horror film, political polemics, and conspiracy theory, Johnson employs these discarded texts to write a rhetorical history of the operation, showing how lobotomy's entanglement with social and political narratives contributed to a powerful image of the operation that persists to this day. In a provocative challenge to the history of medicine, American Lobotomy argues that lobotomy's rhetorical history is crucial to understanding lobotomy's medical history, offering a case study of how medicine accumulates meaning as it circulates in public culture, and it stands as an argument for the need to understand biomedicine as a culturally situated practice.

Making Mental Health: A Critical History historicises mental health by examining the concept from the ‘madness’ of the late nineteenth century to the changing ideas about its contemporary concerns and status. It argues that a critical approach to the history of psychiatry and mental health shows them to constitute a dual clinical-political project that gathered pace over the course of the twentieth century and continues to resonate in the present. Drawing on scholarship across several areas of historical inquiry as well as historical and contemporary clinical literature, the book uses a thematic approach to highlight decisive moments that demonstrate the stakes of this engagement in Anglo-American contexts. By tracing the (unfinished) history of institutions, the search for cures for psychiatric distress, the growing interest of the nation-state in mental health, the history of attempts to globalise psychiatry, the controversies over the politics of diagnostic categories that erupted in the 1960s and 1970s, and the history of theorising about the relationship between the psyche and the market, the book offers a comprehensive account of the evolution of mental health into a commonplace concern. Addressing key questions in the fields of history, medical humanities, and the social sciences, as well as in the psychiatry disciplines themselves, the book is an essential contribution to an ongoing conversation about mental distress and its meanings.

Explores the potential of psychedelics as medicine and the intersections of politics, science, and psychedelics • Explores the tumultuous history of psychedelic research, the efforts to restore psychedelic therapies, and the links between psychiatric drugs and mental illness • Offers non-technical summaries of the most recent, double-blind, placebo-controlled studies with MDMA, psilocybin, LSD, and ayahuasca • Includes the work of Rick Doblin, Stanislav Grof, James Fadiman, Julie Holland, Dennis McKenna, David Nichols, Charles Grob, Phil Wolfson, Michael and Annie Mithoefer, Roland Griffiths, Katherine MacLean, and Robert Whitaker Embracing the revival of psychedelic research and the discovery of new therapeutic uses, clinical psychologist Dr. Richard Louis Miller discusses what is happening today in psychedelic medicine--and what will happen in the future--with top researchers and thinkers in this field, including Rick Doblin, Stanislav Grof, James Fadiman, Julie Holland, Dennis McKenna, David Nichols, Charles Grob, Phil Wolfson, Michael and Annie Mithoefer, Roland Griffiths, Katherine MacLean, and Robert Whitaker. Dr. Miller and his contributors cover the tumultuous history of early psychedelic research brought to a halt 50 years ago by the U.S. government as well as offering non-technical summaries of the most recent studies with MDMA, psilocybin, LSD, and ayahuasca. They explore the biochemistry of consciousness and the use of psychedelics for self-discovery and healing. They discuss the use of psilocybin for releasing fear in the terminally ill and the potential for MDMA-assisted psychotherapy in the treatment of PTSD. They examine Dr. Charles Grob’s research on the indigenous use and therapeutic properties of ayahuasca and Dr. Gabor Mate’s attempt to transport this plant medicine to a clinical setting with the help of Canada’s Department of National Health. Dr. Miller and his contributors explore the ongoing efforts to restore psychedelic therapies to the health field, the growing threat of overmedication by the pharmaceutical industry, and the links between psychiatric drugs and mental illness. They also discuss the newly shifting political climate and the push for new research, offering hope for an end to the War on Drugs and a potential renaissance of research into psychedelic medicines around the world.

The Lobotomist explores one of the darkest chapters of American medicine: the desperate attempt to treat the hundreds of thousands of psychiatric patients in need of help during the middle decades of the twentieth century. Into this crisis stepped Walter Freeman, M.D., who saw a solution in lobotomy, a brain operation intended to reduce the severity of psychotic symptoms. Drawing on Freeman’s documents and interviews with Freeman's family, Jack El-Hai takes a penetrating look at the life and work of this complex scientific genius. The Lobotomist explores one of the darkest chapters of American medicine: the desperate attempt to treat the hundreds of thousands of psychiatric patients in need of help during the middle decades of the twentieth century. Into this crisis stepped Walter Freeman, M.D., who saw a solution in lobotomy, a brain operation intended to reduce the severity of psychotic symptoms. Although many patients did not benefit from the thousands of lobotomies Freeman performed, others believed their lobotomies changed them for the better. Drawing on a rich collection of documents Freeman left behind and interviews with Freeman's family, Jack El-Hai takes a penetrating look into the life of this complex scientific genius and traces the physician's fascinating life and work.

Behavioral Neuroscience by George Spilich, presents the neurophysiological aspects of behavior to the 21st-century, digital-native learner in the context of human experience, rather than in that of laboratory experiments with non-human animals. Whether a student has enrolled in the course to prepare them for a career in medicine or science, or they are fulfilling a general education science requirement, Behavioral Neuroscience is written to meet them where they are. The text has an accessible writing style, real-life examples and data sets, active-learning exercises, and multimodal media and quizzes—all designed to make the subject more engaging and relevant. This ground-breaking first edition is ideal for the Introductory Behavioral Neuroscience or the Biological Psychology course.