My Lobotomy: A Memoir Paperback – August 26, 2008

I had heard this book mentioned in a psychology course I took a few years back and was intrigued. The idea that a twelve-year old boy could be given a lobotomy in the first place appalled me and made me curious to hear his story, but then to be told there was no legitimate reason for it to be performed was even more compelling. It took until last week to buy the e-book, but I'm incredibly glad that I did.I will begin by saying I am likely biased in Mr. Sully's favour and my experiences in life have certainly coloured my view of this book. I grew up with a mother who was abusive both mentally/emotionally and physically and my father was at work too often to either know what was happening or investigate when I would tell him anything. Had I lived in Dr. Freeman's heyday, this story could have been me.This book covers Mr. Dully's early life before his step-mother arranged for his lobotomy and follows him to the point of the NPR broadcast about his experience to the publishing of this book. As the description implies, he had a rather wild and checkered life. He was often in trouble with the law and had problems with drugs and alcohol. This book does NOT become a chronicle of his wild behaviour. It does go into some of his exploits, but it is rather a matter-of-fact statement rather than a sensational retelling. He was able to walk away from it all. He is married and has essentially two children. (One is a step-son from a former marriage.)I love the writing style of this book. Some say it is simplistic and it is in a sense. It isn't filled with flowery language, but it doesn't need to be to keep bone's interest. The story speaks for itself and draws you in. I sat in the food court of a mall for an unknown amount of time unable to draw myself out of its spell. Ive seen a lot of people in these reviews make a subtle insinuation that his mind was damaged by the lobotomy and thus he was unable to write as well as he could have otherwise (shame on all of you who think that.) But this man is clearly intelligent. In the book he talks about being able to understand how engines work in trains and cars. This is no simpleton. He found it difficult to get work in the computer field and so decided to drive buses. This wasn't because he was unqualified to do anything else, but it was work he enjoyed.Towards the end of the book when he goes into the work involved in putting together the NPR broadcast, I couldn't help but cry. It ripped my very soul to feel what he went through while interviewing bis father, who refused to accept any blame for what happened. He blamed everyone else involved but himself.Some people have mentioned that he seems not to accept any responsibility for his behaviour. Some have mentioned that this is only one side of the story. As far as it only being one side of the story, the step-mother in question is dead, but Dully's father refuted one of the worst claims made against young Howard and there are notes from Dr. Freeman that seem to suggest that up u tip a certain point, he was thought to be a normal boy. There is also the fact that several others have said his step-mother was shopping doctors trying to find one who would side with her before she found Freeman. All of the previous doctors had said that the step-mother was the problem. That seems to support the theory presented. As for his behaviour, this procedure was intended to change personality, but in doing so I suspect it also can have an effect on how someone perceives right and wrong or perhaps create a disconnect between knowing and doing what's right. Severing the connections between the two halves of the brain could cause so many emotional and moral problems. This man is fortunate to be alive and a productive human being.Bottom line: this is an amazing look at how a man turned his life around. It brought me to tears and it is a book anyone should read.

Take a twelve-year-old boy who has just lost his mother, add a stepmother who didn't like his shenanigans (and they were nothing more than the age-appropriate shenanigans of a twelve-year-old boy who has lost his mother) and who finds public school boring and not stimulating enough to keep him interested, add an overzealous doctor who became very famous for doing unnecessary brain surgery via the weed-whacker method), and you have the tragic story of 'My Lobotomy.' Add the fact that the stepmother LIED to said doctor to make sure he was considered for surgery, and a passive, out of touch father, and you have a pair that could qualify for worst parents ever.Thus is the story of Howard Dully, a man who, thanks to his overwhelmed step mother, had his brain chopped up BY AN ICEPICK inserted through his eyes, in order to make HER life easier. Hers was easier. His was very nearly ruined. Luckily, after a lifetime of institutional living, he actually managed to come to a place of forgiveness and acceptance as he matured. As I read this book, and his story, I found myself vascillating between wanting to hug this boy and wanting to bitchslap his father and stepmother upside the head.Walter Freeman, the lobotomist, once toured the country like a snake oil salesman, selling lobotomies to the families of anyone who was dealing with a difficult (or disliked) member. His criteria weren't strict. He didn't seem to have any problem diagnosing perfectly normal people as untreatable and irredeemable in order to whip out his one treatment option: An icepick. Mind you, he wasn't performing his procedure under general anesthesia or with any care or precision. He rendered his victims unconscious by passing electrical current through their brains. Then, with an icepick and a few taps with a small mallet to break through the back of the eye socket, he literally just used the pick to scramble the frontal lobe of the brain without visualizing the site at all. Sometimes it helped calm 'difficult' patients. More often than not, it just caused irreversible brain damage or death, or had no discernible effect at all.Howard Dully had this done to him at the age of twelve. His input was not necessary. Hell, they didn't even tell him they did it for a number of weeks! He spent most of the rest of his young life in and out of mental institutions until he aged out. His step mother never allowed him to return home again.My Lobotomy is a powerful story about a boy whose only crime was having trouble coping with the death of his mother and a stepmother ill-equipped to cope with him. Most disturbing of all is the fact that, if Dr. Freeman were performing this procedure today, half the kids I knew growing up would have been lobotomized. Were they crazy? No. They were simply bored with a school curriculum that wasn't challenging enough, and/or possibly ADHD sufferers.A very good, engrossing It seems to me that all the thank you letters that Dr. Freeman received were from the family members of his victims, who would naturally find their annoying family members more agreeable after having their frontal lobes scrambled and rendering them much more passive. So who exactly benefited from this procedure?

What a compelling book! What a life story!! Incredible, heartbreaking and introspective. I’m sharing this with many in the world of neuroscience. Thank you Howard Dully!

Charles Dulling’s telling of his life story is moving, tragic, and ultimately, thank God, triumphant. The easy, conversational way the book is written makes it seem like you’re sitting in the room with him, listening to him tell his story. What I love most is that he didn’t hold anything back. He is brutally honest about his life, the horrible things that were done to him but also the many mistakes he made that contributed to his difficult life. And the last few chapters I couldn’t stop smiling as I read. So glad I found and read this book!

Choosing this as my first sentence is based on my son's doubts about true memoirs. I have no reason to question Duffy. Being a child of the forties, we heard about such things being done to young people, young girls in particular. As a teen in the fifties, bad behaviors got you shipped off to girls' schools or homes for unwed mothers to be.My purpose in reading the book was to identify what educational services he received to allow him to be capable of researching, living and writing such a terrific book. He is eloquent, sincere and overtly honest. This was a time when more sophisticated communities would not speak of adoptions, divorce or dating escapades where a crime might have been committed. Secrets were kept, lying among family members and the right to free speech was denied. "Proper and quiet" were two words drilled into girls, with very little encouragement towards search of a career.