Lobotomy Essays

  • The Lobotomy

    1800 Words  | 4 Pages

    Better to Have a Bottle in Front of Me Than a Frontal Lobotomy In the movie, "One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest," Mcmurphy, the main character, undergoes a frontal lobotomy ("cutting of the lobes") to treat his ‘mental illness,’ after several rounds of ECT were unsuccessful in crushing his spirit. In the final scenes of the movie we see from his disposition that he has been reduced from an animated, hyperactive state to a vegetative state. McMurphy’s friend, Chief, tries to talk him, but he stares

  • Lobotomy

    1107 Words  | 3 Pages

    Lobotomy The process of lobotomy was based on several decades of experimental and clinical evidence. Lobotomy is a neurosurgical procedure in which the nerve fibers in the bundle of white matter in the frontal lobe of the brain are severed to interrupt the transmission of various affective responses. It is seldom performed, because it has many unpredictable and undesirable effects. This includes personality change, aggression, socially unacceptable behavior, incontinence, apathy, and lack

  • Essay On Lobotomy

    1911 Words  | 4 Pages

    over 18,000 lobotomies were performed in the United States alone (Boeree 1) . Some people who were lobotomized mainly suffered from some kind of mental illness such as depression, anxiety, obsessive compulsive disorder, known as OCD. Other patients on the other hand, were lobotomized for things such as homosexuality, inappropriateness, or simply because their families believed they needed it. Although some families just did not want to care for their family member and after the lobotomy was performed

  • Ethical Issues In Lobotomy Research

    1152 Words  | 3 Pages

    Have you ever thought how di we get here, who built us up to this part of our generation? Well if you have never heard of a lobotomy it has just a little of how some of us became so normal. A German scientist named Friederich Golz experimented with the surgical ablation of neocortex in dogs. He reported that in 1890 when one removes the temporal lobe the animals seemed to be tamer and calmer then the dogs not operated on. Hearing about this then inspired Gottlied Burckhardt, a supervisor of an insane

  • Lobotomy and the Quest for the I-Function

    2324 Words  | 5 Pages

    A large concern of the field of neurobiology seems to be finding and understanding a connection between the structure and function of the nervous system. What tangible system of tissues is responsible for creating a given perceived output? Some outputs can be more easily traced back to a specific 'motor symphony' and the involved structures isolated. This problem has obsessed generations of scientists. One of the first of this generation of researcher was F.J. Gall who promoted the idea that observable

  • Metaphors of Society in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

    757 Words  | 2 Pages

    Big Nurse. He encourages gambling in the ward, smuggles in wine and women and openly defies authority whenever possible. In the end, Nurse Ratched teaches him the ultimate lesson on authority, which could be seen as a warning against rebellion. His lobotomy is “the establishment” way of quieting the unruly protests of those brave enough to speak their minds. The character of Billy is also meant to show us that disobedience can have disastrous consequences, when the evil Nurse Ratched drives him to suicide

  • Knight’s Poem, Hard Rock Returns to Prison from the Hospital for the Criminal Insane

    1022 Words  | 3 Pages

    what he used to be with no sight. The poem is just about a hero falling after a lobotomy procedure. The authorities used lobotomy to tame Hard Rock’s rebellion and this was not right. The main themes of the poem are rebellion, oppression, and imprisonment. The theme of imprisonment is evident in Hard Rock Returns to Prison from the Hospital for the Criminal Insane poem. Hard Rock was a tough inmate, silenced by lobotomy. Hard Rock was a hero to the other prisoners, and this made the authority to take

  • Asylums In The 1930s Essay

    826 Words  | 2 Pages

    major brain surgery to taking baths for multiple days. One of the most famous forms of a cure during the 1930s was a surgery called Lobotomy. “Lobotomy, also known as leucotomy which mean cut/slice white in Greek, or its nickname of ice pick, is a neurosurgical operation that involves severing connection in the brain’s prefrontal lobe” according to Freeman. Lobotomy was performed by

  • Teenage Life

    637 Words  | 2 Pages

    people can remember the truth about adolescence. Their minds "censor" their memories; and have them believe that being a teenager was was one big party, free of cares and responsibilities. Well let me say this, you couldnOt be more wrong if you had a lobotomy. There aren't that many adults around who realise what adolescence was really like. The anguish, the fear, the anxiety, the stress. People don't remember those problems because they want to forget them. The truth of the matter is, is that being

  • One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest

    619 Words  | 2 Pages

    nurse, Ms. Ratched. As the struggle between them goes on, Mc Murphy starts to show the other men of the ward how to loosen up and that they do not have to always listen to the nurse. Eventually, Mc Murphy is defeated when Ms. Ratched makes him get a lobotomy. When you first pick up the book, you will first notice that the story is told by one of the men who live in the ward. This is Chief Bromden; a half-Indian who is one of the long time committed men. In my eyes, the Bromden is a key character in

  • The Down Fall of Rose Williams and Blanche DuBois

    2663 Words  | 6 Pages

    Tennessee Williams is known to be a Southern playwright of American drama. Williams knew how to show haunting elements like psychological drama, loneliness, and inexcusable violence in his plays. Critics say Williams often depicted women who were suffering from critical downfalls due to his sister Rose Williams. Rose was always fighting with a mental health condition known as schizophrenia all her life. The character Laura in The Glass Menagerie is always compared to Rose, because they were both

  • natural born killers

    510 Words  | 2 Pages

    Seymour Scagnetti (Tom Sizemore). Mickey and Mallory have been apart for a year. Both locked in separate cells in a prison ran by McClusky (Tommy Lee Jones). McClusky has assigned Scagnetti to transport Mickey and Mallory to another place to get a lobotomy done on each of them. But the night before they are sent out, a greedy reporter named Wayne Gale (Robert Downey, Jr.) is giving Mickey a live interview on TV. Pretty soon, Mickey escapes and all hell breaks loose. This film proves to us how screwed

  • Fear in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and The Scarlet Letter

    638 Words  | 2 Pages

    a fog when confronted with problems;  however, this time (he had endured over 200 EST sessions previously) he did not.  However, McMurphy was deteriorating, and the two seemed to be reversing positions.  McMurphy eventually was sentenced to a lobotomy, which left him as a helpless, pathetic person, as the Chief had once been.  The Chief now had the courage to put McMurphy out of his misery, despite what the head nurse, Nurse Ratched, the symbol of the combine to the Chief, would do to him. 

  • The Maturation of Bayard in Faulkner’s The Unvanquished

    640 Words  | 2 Pages

    The Maturation of Bayard in Faulkner’s The Unvanquished William Faulkner tells his novel The Unvanquished through the eyes and ears of Bayard, the son of Confederate Colonel John Sartoris. The author’s use of a young boy during such a turbulent time in American history allows him to relate events from a unique perspective. Bayard holds dual functions within the novel, as both a character and a narrator. The character of Bayard matures into a young adult within the work, while narrator Bayard relays

  • Character Analysis Of One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest

    713 Words  | 2 Pages

    patients. With no force left to sustain her needs, she soon acknowledges she should bring McMurphy down. She completes this by utilizing her beast power of having the capacity to utilize the stun medications and in the long run utilizes a frontal lobotomy to dispose of McMurphy. The one thing she doesn 't understand is that McMurphy has effectively left his blemish on the ward and his activities live on in each patient in the hospital. Patients became more like human less like rabbits under the wolf

  • The Personal Strife of Tennessee Williams

    922 Words  | 2 Pages

    sister named Rose, who was two years older, and when they were growing up they were very close. Rose was a very sensitive child and by her early twenties she was classified as a schizophrenic. She was later institutionalized and eventually given a lobotomy. His sister's condition devastated Williams, and he was afraid throughout his life that he would succumb to madness as well. He based the character of Laura from "The Glass Menagerie" on his sister Rose. Williams had a younger brother named Dakin

  • Phineas P. Gage

    915 Words  | 2 Pages

    Phineas P. Gage was born in 1823. He was a railroad construction worker outside a small town of Cavendish, Vermont. On September 13, 1848, Phineas suffered from a traumatic brain injury, which caused severe damage to parts of his frontal brain due to his accident at work. The day of Phineas accident, he was performing his work duties on the construction of a railroad track. His duty was to set explosive charges in holes drilled into large pieces of rock so that they could be broken up and removed

  • The Door by E.B. White

    1143 Words  | 3 Pages

    give up his search for fulfillment ("jumping at the door"), much like the junkie's persistent refusal to give up that last fix. Finally, as his very life spins out of control, he finally succumbs to his frustrations the only way he can; through a lobotomy, he becomes willing to "meet the soft ground." (3) One way that White draws out his theme is through conflict. The main conflict in this story is powerlessness versus control. The protagonist continuously compares himself with the rats in

  • Tennessee Williams and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

    1601 Words  | 4 Pages

    grandparent's help. There he wrote plays for the Mummers Theatre Group. In 1937 he attended the University of Iowa, studied under Professor E.C. Mabie, and received his B.A. degree. After graduation, he went to New Orleans after learning of his sister's lobotomy (Encyclopedia of World Drama, p. 410). In 1939, Story Magazine published his play A Field of Blue Children. In that year Tennessee also compiled four one act plays under the title American Blues that included Candles in the Sun, The Fugitive

  • Frontal Lobe Syndrome

    1352 Words  | 3 Pages

    frontal cortex including lesions, tumors, and strokes. Lesions damage the frontal cortex when a blow to the head or a sudden change of motion causes the boney structure underneath the frontal lobes to tear the axons (as is the case with prefrontal lobotomy or leucotomy). A stroke can result in ventral and medial frontal lobe damage. Tumors can damage the frontal lobe by being located on one of the lobes, or by causing pressure on the frontal lobe, as is the case with meningioma, subdural hematoma