Page "Lobotomy" Paragraph 46

A damning portrayal of the procedure is found in Ken Kesey's 1962 novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and its 1975 movie adaptation.

Several patients in the mental ward receive lobotomies to discipline or calm them.

The operation is described as brutal and abusive, a " frontal-lobe castration ".

The book's narrator, Chief Bromden, is shocked: " There's nothin ' in the face.

Just like one of those store dummies.

" One patient's surgery changes him from an acute to a chronic mental condition.

" You can see by his eyes how they burned him out over there ; his eyes are all smoked up and gray and deserted inside.