Great and Desperate Cures: The Rise and Decline of Psychosurgery and Other Radical Treatments for Mental Illness

By Elliot S. Valenstein (NHC Fellow, 1983–84)

New York: Basic Books, 1986

From the publisher’s description:

In its heyday (the late 1940s and early 1950s) the mutilating brain operation known as lobotomy (or, more generally, psychosurgery) was performed on tens of thousands of people. How could this have happened? In answering that question, Elliot S. Valenstein, an eminent neuroscientist, provides both a riveting, definitive history of lobotomy and a cautionary tale about the dangers of radical therapies in all of medicine.

Valenstein opens with a fascinating account of bitter rivalries for control of the treatment of mental disorders. Differences between biological and functional explanations of mental illness evolved into almost open warfare between competing specialties. First, neurology was squeezed between neurosurgery and a burgeoning psychiatry. Later, psychiatry faced both external competitors (notably psychologists) and internal factions, including psychoanalysts and those psychiatrists attempting to treat intractable mental illness in overcrowded asylums. These battles provided partisans aplenty for any new treatment.

Valenstein's story of ambition, desperation, economic forces, muted criticism, noisy media, and much fundamental ignorance has not ended. For, concludes the author, these factors, which made ill-conceived therapies popular, are still part of mainstream medicine today.

Awards and Prizes

Best Non-Fiction Books by Boston Globe (1986); New York Times Notable Book (1986)

Subjects

Medicine / History / Mental Illness / Lobotomy / Psychosurgery /

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Valenstein, Elliot S. (NHC Fellow, 1983–84). Great and Desperate Cures: The Rise and Decline of Psychosurgery and Other Radical Treatments for Mental Illness. New York: Basic Books, 1986.