Volume 33, Number 7 · April 24, 1986
Unkind Cuts
By Macdonald Critchley
Great and Desperate Cures: The Rise and Decline of Psychosurgery and Other Radical Treatments for Mental Illness
by Elliot S. Valenstein
Basic Books, 338 pp., $19.95
This is the book which for some length of time I have been awaiting. Not without trepidation, having lived through those lamentable years that made up what the author calls 'the rise and decline of psychosurgery.' Professor Valenstein deals particularly with the mutilating brain operation known as a leucotomy—or, in the US, lobotomy—which was performed on tens of thousands of people before its decline in popularity during the 1950s. Most of the principals who developed this procedure were known to me and although I was little more than a disapproving onlooker, I was never an active protestor, I regret to say.
Review, 4222 words
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