Walter Freeman is a name infamous among mental health advocacy
circles. The psychiatrist was the innovator of the transorbital
lobotomy, and became a staunch advocate for its use in
“treating” the mentally ill. The transorbital lobotomy is a
brutal procedure in which a thin metal pick is punched through a
patient’s orbital cavity and into the brain’s frontal lobe. Once
inserted, the physician then manipulates the tool to sever a
portion of the brain. Patients, obviously, were never the same.
Most experienced difficulty thinking, personality problems and
dulled emotions. Some became crippled with uncontrollable
seizures. A few died from the procedure. Freeman, undeterred,
toured the United States in a van dubbed the “lobotomobile”,
stopping to train surgeons at state hospitals. Thus, lobotomies
were inflicted upon the nation’s most vulnerable: troubled
children and adults, the indigent and disabled.