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Inclusion Daily Express

November 17, 2005

Man tells all about lobotomy he received as a child

By Dave Reynolds

NEW YORK, NEW YORK - "This is Howard Dully. In 1960, when I was 12, I was lobotomized by this man, Walter Freeman."

"Until this moment I haven't shared this fact with anyone except my wife and a few close friends."

"Now, I'm sharing it with you."

"If you saw me, you'd never know I had a lobotomy ... But I've always felt different, wondered if something's missing from my soul."

So begins the audio journey that began with a potentially life-altering operation 45 years ago, and took listeners up to the present when Dully, now 56, confronted his father for allowing the surgery to take place.

National Public Radio's "All Things Considered" on Wednesday aired Dully's 22-minute story, entitled "My Lobotomy".

Dully's parents allowed Dr. Walter J. Freeman to perform the transorbital lobotomy, a form of psychosurgery in which a medical instrument shaped like a long nail was thrust up under the bone above his eyes and into his brain then wiggled around in the tissue. The lobotomy was intended to treat "behavior disorders" for people with mental illness. The practice was mostly discredited by the late 1960s, but not until after approximately 50,000 Americans underwent the operations.

Because of the lack of understanding about the surgery, along with Freeman's showmanship and crusading nature (he perfected the procedure so it would take less than 8 minutes), many of those who were lobotomized experienced brain damage that profoundly changed their personalities and their abilities.

Freeman's most famous patient was Rose Marie Kennedy, the oldest sister of President John F. Kennedy. "Rosemary", who was considered to have mild intellectual disability, was lobotomized at her father's insistence in 1941 when she was 23. The operation caused significant brain damage, however, leaving Rosemary unable to speak or do many things for herself. She remained in a Wisconsin institution until her death in January of this year.

Related:

"'My Lobotomy': Howard Dully's Journey" (NPR -- All Things Considered)
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5014080

"Walter Freeman's Lobotomies: Oral Histories" (NPR)
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5014594

"Frequently Asked Questions About Lobotomies" (NPR)
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5014565

"A Lobotomy Timeline" (NPR)
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5014576

"A Lobotomy That He Says Didn't Touch His Soul" (New York Times)
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/16/arts/16lobo.html