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My Lobotomy: A Memoir

Book Cover
Average Rating
Publisher:
Tantor Media, Inc
Pub. Date:
2007
Language:
English
Description
A gut-wrenching memoir by a man who was lobotomized at the age of twelve. Assisted by journalist/novelist Charles Fleming, Howard Dully recounts a family tragedy whose Sophoclean proportions he could only sketch in his powerful 2005 broadcast on NPR's All Things Considered. "In 1960," he writes, "I was given a transorbital, or 'ice pick' lobotomy. My stepmother arranged it. My father agreed to it. Dr. Walter Freeman, the father of the American lobotomy, told me he was going to do some 'tests.' It took ten minutes and cost two hundred dollars." Fellow doctors called Freeman's technique barbaric: an ice pick-like instrument was inserted about three inches into each eye socket and twirled to sever connections from the frontal lobe to the rest of the brain. The procedure was intended to help curb a variety of psychoses by muting emotional responses, but sometimes it irreversibly reduced patients to a childlike state or (in 15 percent of the operations Freeman performed) killed them outright. Dully's ten-minute "test" did neither, but in some ways it had a far crueler result, since it didn't end the unruly behavior that had set his stepmother against him to begin with. "I spent the next forty years in and out of insane asylums, jails, and halfway houses," he tells us. "I was homeless, alcoholic, and drug-addicted. I was lost." From all accounts, there was no excuse for the lobotomy. Dully had never been "crazy," and his (not very) bad behavior sounds like the typical acting-up of a child in desperate need of affection. His stepmother responded with unrelenting abuse and neglect, and his father allowed her to demonize his son and never admitted his complicity in the lobotomy; Freeman capitalized on their monumental dysfunction. It's a tale of epic horror, and while Dully's courage in telling it inspires awe, listeners are left to speculate about what drove supposedly responsible adults to such unconscionable acts.
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Grouping Information

Grouped Work ID84589044-7cd6-6d65-1012-e9415e7045b1
Grouping Titlemy lobotomy
Grouping Authorhoward dully
Grouping Categorybook
Grouping LanguageEnglish (eng)
Last Grouping Update2024-03-29 02:17:20AM
Last Indexed2024-03-28 02:24:37AM

Solr Fields

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0
accelerated_reader_reading_level
0
auth_author2
Heller, Johnny
author
Dully, Howard
author2-role
Heller, Johnny,reader
hoopla digital
author_display
Dully, Howard
display_description
A gut-wrenching memoir by a man who was lobotomized at the age of twelve. Assisted by journalist/novelist Charles Fleming, Howard Dully recounts a family tragedy whose Sophoclean proportions he could only sketch in his powerful 2005 broadcast on NPR's All Things Considered. "In 1960," he writes, "I was given a transorbital, or 'ice pick' lobotomy. My stepmother arranged it. My father agreed to it. Dr. Walter Freeman, the father of the American lobotomy, told me he was going to do some 'tests.' It took ten minutes and cost two hundred dollars." Fellow doctors called Freeman's technique barbaric: an ice pick-like instrument was inserted about three inches into each eye socket and twirled to sever connections from the frontal lobe to the rest of the brain. The procedure was intended to help curb a variety of psychoses by muting emotional responses, but sometimes it irreversibly reduced patients to a childlike state or (in 15 percent of the operations Freeman performed) killed them outright. Dully's ten-minute "test" did neither, but in some ways it had a far crueler result, since it didn't end the unruly behavior that had set his stepmother against him to begin with. "I spent the next forty years in and out of insane asylums, jails, and halfway houses," he tells us. "I was homeless, alcoholic, and drug-addicted. I was lost." From all accounts, there was no excuse for the lobotomy. Dully had never been "crazy," and his (not very) bad behavior sounds like the typical acting-up of a child in desperate need of affection. His stepmother responded with unrelenting abuse and neglect, and his father allowed her to demonize his son and never admitted his complicity in the lobotomy; Freeman capitalized on their monumental dysfunction. It's a tale of epic horror, and while Dully's courage in telling it inspires awe, listeners are left to speculate about what drove supposedly responsible adults to such unconscionable acts.
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eAudiobook
format_category_catalog
Audio Books
eBook
id
84589044-7cd6-6d65-1012-e9415e7045b1
isbn
9781400125364
last_indexed
2024-03-28T09:24:37.294Z
lexile_score
-1
literary_form
Non Fiction
literary_form_full
Non Fiction
primary_isbn
9781400125364
publishDate
2007
publisher
Tantor Media, Inc
Tantor Media, Inc.
recordtype
grouped_work
subject_facet
Abuse
Biographies
Biography
Medicine
title_display
My Lobotomy A Memoir
title_full
My Lobotomy : a memoir [electronic resource] / Charles Fleming and Howard Dully
My Lobotomy A Memoir
title_short
My Lobotomy
title_sub
A Memoir
topic_facet
Abuse
Biography
Biography & Autobiography
Family & Relationships
Medical
Medicine
Nonfiction

Solr Details Tables

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overdrive:2ac11d01-8127-4a09-8952-3e4f407f0e2c-2Online OverDrive CollectionOnline OverDriveeAudiobookAudio Books1falsetrueOverDriveAvailable Online

record_details

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hoopla:MWT10756514eAudiobookAudio BooksUnabridgedEnglishTantor Media, Inc20071 online resource (1 audio file (540 min.)) : digital.
overdrive:2ac11d01-8127-4a09-8952-3e4f407f0e2ceAudiobookAudio BooksEnglishTantor Media, Inc2007

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overdrive:2ac11d01-8127-4a09-8952-3e4f407f0e2c-2Available OnlineAvailable Onlinefalsetruetruefalsefalsefalse