This program tells the gripping tale of medical intervention gone awry.This program tells the gripping tale of medical intervention gone awry.This program tells the gripping tale of medical intervention gone awry.
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Lee Wilkof
- Dr. Walter Freeman
- (voice)
Clint Jordan
- Family Member
- (voice)
Joanna Merlin
- Family Member
- (voice)
Walter Freeman
- Self
- (archive footage)
- Directors
- Writer
- All cast & crew
- Production, box office & more at IMDbPro
Storyline
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Walter Freeman - a complex portrait of a doctor who did do some harm
This is the story of the man - Dr. Walter Freeman - as much as it is about the procedure he championed - the frontal lobotomy. It was a standard of care for mental patients from 1936 until 1955.
This episode of American Experience is somewhat like a horror film. You have this complex character, Freeman, who at age 28 in 1924 was the youngest director at the laboratory of St. Elizabeth's Mental Hospital to date. Freeman's grandfather had been both a pioneering surgeon and a showman, having been the first person to successfully remove a brain tumor from a living patient who was still living at the end of the operation. Freeman very much wanted to walk in his footsteps.
Freeman's area of research was neurology, and in 1936 he read some research on another doctor who had removed cores from the frontal lobes of patients with 40% of the patients no longer subject to chronic ravings. Freeman immediately set out to refine this procedure with the help of a surgeon since Freeman was not a surgeon himself.
Now the background of Freeman's work was this. At the time Freeman was working, there were only crude ways to treat mental illness. Electroshock therapy calmed patients for awhile, but then the mania or depression or both returned. There were no drugs, and mental hospitals were often dumping grounds for people who were chronically mentally ill. Studies from WWI showed soldiers who had their frontal lobes damaged in battle did not die, but there was a great decrease in their anxiety levels.
So you have Dr. Freeman starting out with the lobotomy as a surgical procedure that was a "last resort" in the treatment of the mentally ill. But he gets more ambitious with time and turns the procedure into basically an outpatient procedure in which the surgeon is no longer needed because he uses an icepick - the first one was literally from his own kitchen - to go through the eye of the patient, in such a way that their vision is spared, and into the brain. It also goes from a last resort procedure to something he would do almost on a whim and even on an assembly line basis.
The patients would almost all be instantly better as far as severe mental illness was concerned. However the total results were mixed. Some patients were severely mentally and physically disabled, some lost all drive, some lost all self control and overate compulsively, and most fell into some middle range where they could handle the mental deficits they received as a result and do responsible work.
SInce there were no laws or advocacy for the mentally ill at the time, the popularity of this procedure went unabated until two things happened. One was the results of long term studies on the procedure that began appearing in the mid 1950s. The other was the invention of the drug thorazine, the very first of the anti-psychotics in 1954. These two events made the lobotomy and thus Dr. Freeman lose popularity and influence since he refused to let go of the procedure.
Interspersed with the story of Freeman's professional career and the cautionary tale of the hazards of obsession are stories of many of the patients that he treated. And the stories are quite mixed. Some people felt like they got a loved one back that had been 24/7 ranting. The relatives of less extreme cases noted the sometimes disastrous side effects. There was one particularly sad tale with the lobotomized person speaking for himself. He was age 60 at the time and had been lobotomized in 1960 at age 12 by Dr. Freeman himself for "acting up", today the kind of thing you would take a child to therapy for, not brain surgery.
What is interesting about this episode is that it was even handed enough of a portrait that Freeman's sons were interviewed for it. So in the end - was Freeman someone who couldn't see past his own professional success and observe his uneven results, a man unwilling to part with his obsession with lobotomy even when the times and science proved him wrong, or was he a man who merely tried to do something about the suffering of the mentally ill when everybody else could do nothing?
An interesting episode and an interesting question to ponder.
This episode of American Experience is somewhat like a horror film. You have this complex character, Freeman, who at age 28 in 1924 was the youngest director at the laboratory of St. Elizabeth's Mental Hospital to date. Freeman's grandfather had been both a pioneering surgeon and a showman, having been the first person to successfully remove a brain tumor from a living patient who was still living at the end of the operation. Freeman very much wanted to walk in his footsteps.
Freeman's area of research was neurology, and in 1936 he read some research on another doctor who had removed cores from the frontal lobes of patients with 40% of the patients no longer subject to chronic ravings. Freeman immediately set out to refine this procedure with the help of a surgeon since Freeman was not a surgeon himself.
Now the background of Freeman's work was this. At the time Freeman was working, there were only crude ways to treat mental illness. Electroshock therapy calmed patients for awhile, but then the mania or depression or both returned. There were no drugs, and mental hospitals were often dumping grounds for people who were chronically mentally ill. Studies from WWI showed soldiers who had their frontal lobes damaged in battle did not die, but there was a great decrease in their anxiety levels.
So you have Dr. Freeman starting out with the lobotomy as a surgical procedure that was a "last resort" in the treatment of the mentally ill. But he gets more ambitious with time and turns the procedure into basically an outpatient procedure in which the surgeon is no longer needed because he uses an icepick - the first one was literally from his own kitchen - to go through the eye of the patient, in such a way that their vision is spared, and into the brain. It also goes from a last resort procedure to something he would do almost on a whim and even on an assembly line basis.
The patients would almost all be instantly better as far as severe mental illness was concerned. However the total results were mixed. Some patients were severely mentally and physically disabled, some lost all drive, some lost all self control and overate compulsively, and most fell into some middle range where they could handle the mental deficits they received as a result and do responsible work.
SInce there were no laws or advocacy for the mentally ill at the time, the popularity of this procedure went unabated until two things happened. One was the results of long term studies on the procedure that began appearing in the mid 1950s. The other was the invention of the drug thorazine, the very first of the anti-psychotics in 1954. These two events made the lobotomy and thus Dr. Freeman lose popularity and influence since he refused to let go of the procedure.
Interspersed with the story of Freeman's professional career and the cautionary tale of the hazards of obsession are stories of many of the patients that he treated. And the stories are quite mixed. Some people felt like they got a loved one back that had been 24/7 ranting. The relatives of less extreme cases noted the sometimes disastrous side effects. There was one particularly sad tale with the lobotomized person speaking for himself. He was age 60 at the time and had been lobotomized in 1960 at age 12 by Dr. Freeman himself for "acting up", today the kind of thing you would take a child to therapy for, not brain surgery.
What is interesting about this episode is that it was even handed enough of a portrait that Freeman's sons were interviewed for it. So in the end - was Freeman someone who couldn't see past his own professional success and observe his uneven results, a man unwilling to part with his obsession with lobotomy even when the times and science proved him wrong, or was he a man who merely tried to do something about the suffering of the mentally ill when everybody else could do nothing?
An interesting episode and an interesting question to ponder.
helpful•10
- AlsExGal
- Mar 17, 2020
Details
- Runtime55 minutes
- Sound mix
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