BIROn - Birkbeck Institutional Research Online

    Lobotomomizzare le paure degli americani: la cura radicale per gli stati gravi di ansia, 1930-1980

    Bourke, Joanna (2002) Lobotomomizzare le paure degli americani: la cura radicale per gli stati gravi di ansia, 1930-1980. Revista Internazionale di Studi Nordamericani 23 , pp. 10-21.

    Full text not available from this repository.

    Abstract

    This essay relates the historical and scientific development of psychosurgery in America from the 1940s to its decline in the 1970s. It describes in detail the procedures and effects of lobotomy, perpetrated on patients treated for chronic fear, in the name of freedom from anxiety and fear. For psychosurgeons even passivity and a more superficial or shallow affective life, a “surgically-induced childhood”, was better than experiencing fear. Ethical issues in American psychiatry and some literature of the counter-culture of the 60s, questioned the legitimacy of such practice and alternative forms of treatment, such as psychoactive drugs and psychotherapy, became the new solutions for a disorder which still is central to the American psyche.

    Metadata

    Item Type: Article
    School: Birkbeck Faculties and Schools > Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences > School of Historical Studies
    Research Centres and Institutes: Gender and Sexuality, Birkbeck (BiGS), Social Research, Birkbeck Institute for (BISR)
    Depositing User: Sarah Hall
    Date Deposited: 06 Dec 2016 17:05
    Last Modified: 02 Aug 2023 17:29
    URI: https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/17580

    Statistics

    Activity Overview
    6 month trend
    0Downloads
    6 month trend
    267Hits

    Additional statistics are available via IRStats2.

    Archive Staff Only (login required)

    Edit/View Item Edit/View Item