1. In 2007, Dully published My Lobotomy, a memoir co-authored by Charles Fleming. The memoir relates Dully's experiences as a child, the effect of the procedure on his life, his efforts as an adult to discover why the medically unnecessary procedure was performed on.
2. In this heartfelt memoir from one of the youngest recipients of the transorbital lobotamy, Howard Dully shares the story of a painfully dysfunctional childhood, a misspent youth, his struggle to claim the life that was taken from him, and his redemption.

My Lobotomy, by Howard Dully and Charles Fleming. Three Rivers Press (2008), 284 pages. It’s hard to beat a title like this! Happily, My Lobotomy does not disappoint. In 1960, at the age of twelve, the author was given a transorbital lobotomy, despite the fact that he had no mental illness or serious behavioral problems. In this heartfelt memoir from one of the youngest recipients of the transorbital lobotamy, Howard Dully shares the story of a painfully dysfunctional childhood, a misspent youth, his struggle to claim the life that was taken from him, and his redemption.At twelve, Howard Dully was guilty of the same crimes as other boys his age: he was moody and messy, rambunctious with his brothers, contrary.

Howard Dully (born November 30, 1948) is one of the youngest recipients of the transorbitallobotomy, a procedure performed on him when he was 12 years old. Dully received international attention in 2005, following the broadcasting of his story on National Public Radio. Subsequently, in 2007, he published a New York Times Best Seller memoir, My Lobotomy, a story of the hardships of his lobotomy, co-authored by Charles Fleming.

Biography[edit]

Dully was born on November 30, 1948, in Oakland, California, the eldest son of Rodney and June Louise Pierce Dully. Following the death of his mother from cancer in 1954, Dully's father married single mother Shirley Lucille Hardin in 1955.

NeurologistWalter Freeman had diagnosed Dully as suffering from childhood schizophrenia since age four, although numerous other medical and psychiatric professionals who had seen Dully did not detect a psychiatric disorder. In 1960, at 12 years of age, Dully was submitted by his father and stepmother for a trans-orbital lobotomy, performed by Dr. Freeman for $200.^[1] During the procedure, a long, sharp instrument called an orbitoclast was inserted through each of Dully's eye sockets 7 cm (2.75 inches) into his brain.

Dully was institutionalized for years as a juvenile (in Agnews State Hospital as a minor); transferred to Rancho Linda School in San Jose, California, a school for children with behavior problems; incarcerated; and was eventually homeless and an alcoholic. After becoming sober and getting a college degree in computer information systems, he became a California state certified behind-the-wheel instructor for a school bus company in San Jose, California.

In his 50s, with the assistance of National Public RadioproducerDavid Isay, Dully started to research what had happened to him as a child. By this time, both his stepmother and Dr. Freeman were dead, and due to the aftereffects of the surgery, he was unable to rely on his own memories. He travelled the country with Isay and Piya Kochhar, speaking with members of his family, relatives of other lobotomy patients, and relatives of Dr. Freeman, and also gaining access to Freeman's archives. Dully first relayed his story on a National Public Radio broadcast in 2005, prior to co-authoring a memoir published in 2007.^[2]

National Public Radio[edit]

On November 16, 2005, Isay broadcast Dully's search as a Sound Portraits documentary on NPR. According to USA Today, the documentary, which The New York Times describes as 'celebrated',^[2] 'created a firestorm'.^[3] The broadcast, aired on All Things Considered, drew more listener response than any other program that had ever aired, and by May 2006, the Crown Publishing Group had negotiated worldwide rights to publish Dully's story in book form.^[4]

Memoir[edit]

Life After Lobotomy

In 2007, Dully published My Lobotomy, a memoir co-authored by Charles Fleming. The memoir relates Dully's experiences as a child, the effect of the procedure on his life, his efforts as an adult to discover why the medically unnecessary procedure was performed on him and the effect of the radio broadcast on his life.

The book was critically well received. The New York Times described it as 'harrowing', 'one of the saddest stories you'll ever read'.^[2]USA Today called it 'at once horrifying and inspiring'.^[3] The San Francisco Chronicle critiqued it as 'a gruesome but compulsively readable tale, ultimately redemptive'.^[5] In the United Kingdom, The Observer characterized the book as 'a forceful account of his survival' that 'sheds light on the man who subjected him to one of the most brutal surgical procedures in medical history'.^[6]The Times described it as 'uncomfortable reading', noting that '[i]t is, given the circumstances, astonishingly free of rancour.'^[7]

In the last section of the memoir, entitled 'One Last Word', Dully compared his lobotomy to young children today who are diagnosed with depression, bipolar disorder or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder without a second opinion, and are subsequently medicated with powerful medications.^[8]

Bibliography[edit]

• Howard Dully, My Lobotomy, Crown. ISBN0-307-38126-9
• Howard Dully and Charles Fleming, Messing With My Head, Vermillion, 2007. ISBN0-09-192213-5

References[edit]

Howard Dully My Lobotomy

1. ^Lynette Hintze: Lobotomy memoir reconnects woman with childhood friend, Great Falls Tribune, 13 December 2019
2. ^ ^abcWilliam, Grimes (2007-09-14). 'Spikes in the Brain, and a Search for Answers'. The New York Times. Retrieved 2008-09-01.
3. ^ ^abDonahue, Deirdre (2007-09-28). 'Four memoirs of family ties—and family lies'. USA Today. Retrieved 2008-09-01.
4. ^Staff. (2006-05-15) 'No-brainer. Crown Books Corp. acquires rights to Howard Dully's book.' Publishers Weekly.
5. ^Guthmann, Edward (2007-09-26). 'His lobotomy, his recovery, in his words'. San Francisco Chronicle. sfgate. Retrieved 2008-09-01.
6. ^Day, Elizabeth (2008-01-13). 'He was bad, so they put an ice pick in his brain...' London: The Observer. Retrieved 2008-09-02.
7. ^Hawkes, Nigel (2008-03-22). 'Nigel Hawkes reviews two new books about the brain'. The Times. London. Retrieved 2009-09-02.
8. ^Fleming, Howard Dully with Charles (2007). My lobotomy (1st ed.). New York: Crown Publishers. pp. 268–269. ISBN978-0-307-38126-2.

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The lobotomy continues to fascinate and to haunt. How could the 1949 Nobel Prize for Medicine or Physiology go to Egas Moniz for the invention of a procedure that, within two decades, was rejected, with horror, as barbaric? As a matter of inside Nobel politics, there has long been some thought that Moniz really won the prize for inventing angiography, but the Prize is given for an invention or discovery, not for a body of work, and the citation is for the “frontal leucotomy.” The terms frontal lobotomy or prefrontal lobotomy were popularized by the procedure’s American exponent – Walter Freeman, the neurologist who invented the surgical procedure that allowed out-patient use of the procedure, the “ice pick” (literally in the first cases) through the orbit behind the eye.

This same Walter Freeman ended his career with an office in the wealthy Silicon Valley (then in its silicon infancy) suburb of Los Altos. And, in 1960, he “gave” (the verb seems wrong) a prefrontal lobotomy to a 12 year-old boy named Howard Dully. My Lobotomy is Dully’s story, told by the now 60 year-old Dully himself, with the aid of writer Charles Fleming.

The book began as a result of a National Public Radio program on lobotomies, which, in effect, became a program on Dully. Dully had been a difficult boy, but not, at least as he tells the story, a particularly abnormal one. He speculates, plausibly, that today he might have been diagnosed with ADD or ADHD. He believes his stepmother hated him, irrationally, and was willing to do anything to make him disappear, before and after his “successful” lobotomy. Freeman, he thinks, was gripped by an overriding urge to keep experimenting with his procedure, extending it still further to children, including Howard, whom he diagnosed as having had juvenile schizophrenia since age 4.

After the procedure Dully did not become a zombie or an idiot. It sounds, from his description (the main one we have) that he became more detached and vague, at least for a while. (Freeman, however, thought his improvement was remarkable.) His stepmother still would not take him back into the home so he drifted back and forth from the juvenile hall to Agnews, a state hospital for the insane, to a special school for the disabled. As an adult he lived mainly on social security disability payments and a few women in his life, engaging in too many drugs, too much alcohol, and occasional petty crime, until, at about age 45, he decided to straighten out his life. He seems to have done well; he has supported himself and his wife through driving a school bus and training other bus drivers for most of the last fifteen years.

Ask Me About My Lobotomy

The book is mainly Howard’s story, of his family and his early life. His misbehavior in school, his childhood trips to the mountains, or his complex and painful relationship with his stepmother may or may not interest you, depending on your tastes. The discussion of Freeman, and the contents of the notes Freeman took on Howard, are more interesting from the perspective of neuroethics. I would have liked more scientific discussion of the lobotomy generally and of Howard’s case in particular. But this is Howard’s memoir, not a scientific report on him.

The latter may be coming. According to the afterward of the paperback edition of the book, Dully has now been scanned in an MRI. The researchers found major brain damage that they would expect to render a person completely incompetent. They can only attribute his normal or close to normal life to the remarkable brain plasticity of the young. I understand that they hope to have a manuscript submitted around the end of 2009. That paper should be well worth reading and will make this already interesting memoir even more useful in neuroethics.

– Hank Greely