The Lobotomist

The Lobotomist ( 2008 )

In 1924, 28-year-old Dr Walter J Freeman arrived at St Elizabeth’s in Washington DC, one of the United State’s largest hospitals for the mentally ill, and home to thousands of patients suffering from agitated depression, dementia, and psychosis. Freeman embarked on a bold experiment: to discover a physical abnormality in the brain that caused mental illness. The Lobotomist is the gripping and tragic story of an ambitious doctor, the desperate families who sought his help, and the medical establishment that embraced him. The program features interviews with Dr Freeman’s former patients and their families, his students, and medical historians, and offers an often overwhelming look at one of the darkest chapters in psychiatric history.

Man or monster? This fascinating film explores the career of one of the medical profession’s most controversial pioneers.

The Lobotomist is a fascinating, if not disturbing, glimpse at the pioneer of one of the medical profession’s most controversial treatments for the mentally ill: the lobotomy. The documentary explains how the procedure, now considered outdated and barbaric, came into being and how its founder, the young and ambitious neurologist Walter Freeman, made it available on a mass scale in the United States and took on his critics, defending the merits of the lobotomy right up until his final days.

The film documents Freeman’s career, including his early experiences working in institutions for the mentally ill, an account of the first patient to undergo a frontal lobe lobotomy, as well as the mixed reception he received from the medical profession and the public. The film uses old footage, photographs, expert opinions from those who lived through the procedure’s existence, and the chilling accounts of relatives of Freeman’s former patients; chilling in part because of their unwavering support for the procedure.
One of the more troubling of these accounts was that of a man who received Dr Freeman’s “treatment” at the tender age of 12 on the urging of his new step mother, who thought the procedure would curb his disobedience.

The Lobotomist is both captivating and educational, and constructs a powerful impression of one of history’s worst medical disasters.