Talk:Psychosurgery
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"Lobotomy"
This is quite good! I have two questions: 1. why no mention of the common or garden name lobotomy? Even if the name is entirely incorrect, it's the one people know (I myself didn't come across 'leucotomy' until I was reading some pop-neurology a few years ago). 2. why the scare quotes around 'scientific'? I think the line between science and pseudo-science deserves a sentence of explanation here, not dismissal with a scare quote - hell, Moniz got a Nobel Prize. MichaelTinkler
On third reading, I'm simply going to delete 'scientific'. It was a treatment. The explanation of why it wasn't a good treatment is not perfect, but it explains the problems better than scare quotes. MichaelTinkler
- 1. lobotomy is a term in its own right for a surgical incision into the lobe of any organ so to use it here would be incorrect.
- 2. scare quotes because survival rates were initially very poor (7 out of 20 isn't science it is slaughter) and the acceptance of a technique on that basis is desperation. But it had, for the time, an edge that could be called scientific without that being the correct phrase. Nobel prizes are not a indicator of correctness - they have been handed out for research subsequently proved wrong. -- TwoOneTwo
Psychosurgery today
I thought psychosurgery was, in a very few cases, still performed today for very severe OCD. There's also the history of surgery for epilepsy, though that's not really psychosurgery I suppose. --Robert Merkel
- Cingulotomy is still performed, whereby the cingulate gyrus is ablated in some way. It remains fairly rare - see [1] (http://www.breggin.com/lobotomy.htm) -- FP <talk><edits> 20:47, May 15, 2005 (UTC)
General comments
This article seems to be a bit disorganised. In particular the paragraph:
- The initial criteria for treatment were quite steep, only a few conditions of "tortured self-concern" were put forward for treatment. Severe chronic anxiety, depression with risk of suicide and incapacitating obsessive-compulsive disorder were the main symptoms treated. The original leucotomy was a crude operation and the practice was soon developed into a more exact, stereotactic procedure where only very small lesions were placed in the brain.
This seems out of sequence as the next paragraph goes on to talk about "icepick lobotomy", the very opposite of stereotactic surgery. Also I think the "initial criteria" given look like the current criteria for surgery but I don't know enough about this subject to know if they were also the initial critera. Cosgrove and Raunch (http://neurosurgery.mgh.harvard.edu/Functional/psysurg.htm) in their excellent article do not really go into the early indications. Certainly the criteria widened to include many conditions during the heydays of its use.
The other thing that doesn't come across clearly in this article is that the use declined after the introduction of effective treatments but a very small number of people still have psychosurgery performed on them for intractable psychiatric conditions. The current indications for psychosurgery should be listed.
If anyone is looking after this please have a go at fixing it. --CloudSurfer 09:44, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)
Request for more info
As someone who is both curious and horrified by this kind of thing, I would like to know (a) why it was theorised that severing the prefrontal cortex from the rest of the brain would have any effect (b) what effect it was supposed to have and (c) what effect it actually had, apart from death in some cases. What does psychosurgery actually achieve? Presumably it alters the mood, but how, and to what extent? Were the thousands who were lobotomised able to lead relatively normal lives thereafter? (I assume it would be hard to distinguish the results of lobotomy from the 'noise' of the patient's original illness, however). Ashley Pomeroy 21:51, 19 Nov 2004 (UTC)
- I second that, this article is majorly useless for anyone wanting to learn, perfect for someone who loves gossip. --Kintaro 15:33, 15 May 2005 (UTC)
NPOV?
Now, I confess I'm not an expert in these things (medicine, science), but I think the article's tone isn't very neutral. It actually took me three reads of this article to figure out that lobotomy may have had any effect besides severe impairment. Putting things in context, mentioning the effects of the operation, and some more useful links might be in order. -- 193.166.89.77
- It seems this article has had problems for a while, as expressed above. I guess I'll give it an overhaul in the next few days, if nobody else will. -- FP <talk><edits> 20:47, May 15, 2005 (UTC)
POV?
The article is definitely judgemental of psychic surgery, which isn't even what it is about. -- 66.32.73.120
Does this really need a mention
This term should not be confused with the allegedly fraudulent, sleight-of-hand practice of psychic surgery.
This term should not be confused with the practice of psychic surgery. would do just fine. --Kintaro 15:33, 15 May 2005 (UTC)