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Originally Posted by TheSquealer
i don't think destroying the part of the brain responsible in part for executive functions such as regulating impulses and inhibitions would be a great idea for a pedophile. in fact, there are actually a couple well studied patients who suddenly began obsessing on CP due to tumors in this area, when the tumors were removed, went back to normal... then the tumors came back and they went back to obsessing on it again, was removed went back to normal etc. Which is a bit of a mindfuck to think about when considering justice and crime and punishment.
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Lobotomy turned people into very flat simpletons usually, it did reduce inhibitions but more like a child, I don't think I've ever read about a lobotomized patient becoming violent or criminal - it was the opposite.
Psychiatry for most of the 20th century was mad science.
"According to a New York Times article from 1937, people with the following symptoms would benefit from a lobotomy: "Tension, apprehension, anxiety, depression, insomnia, suicidal ideas, delusions, hallucinations, crying spells, melancholia, obsessions, panic states, disorientation, psychalgesia (pains of psychic origin), nervous indigestion and hysterical paralysis.""
Madness, but they had nothing to offer people back then, it was an absolutely hopeless situation. For the truly insane/psychotic it was worth a shot, the trouble is they decided it was a treatment appropriate for anybody with anything close to what was considered mentally ill at the time and that included homosexuals, people with mental retardation, histrionic neurotic people etc
The Kennedy daughter, Rosemary, who was lobotomized was a functioning very pretty young girl. She had a difficult birth, oxygen deprived, which affected her brain. She played sports, had friends, had a job doing office work. Her 'mental illness' was she was slow, IQ between 60 and 70, roughly the intellectual/emotional capacity of an 8 to 12 year old. The Kennedys didn't hide her, she made public appearances and sent her to a private Catholic school/college where she had her own teacher. She did become a handful as she got older, mood swings, sneaking away from the private college, wikipedia does mention some violence but not like she was stabbing herself or others - most think she was just going through the stress we all go through in adolescence and young adulthood with the additional pressure on her that her brothers and sisters were the highest of achievers in a family that demanded it. Poor thing. Joe Kennedy did become worried that she would become an embarrassment to him and hurt his political career. A doctor sold him on lobotomy for her, that it would even out her moods. He never even told his wife that it was going to be done, she had always been in denial that her daughter was different, though maybe what she really didn't want was for her daughter to be stigmatized. Anyway, the lobotomy on Rosemary Kennedy was a complete disaster, they obviously cut away very important parts of her brain, left with the mind/brain of a 2 year old, an incontinent vegetable.
Such a tragedy.
