Dr. Walter Freeman, the ice pick lobotomist
I’d fully intended to move away from the subject of insane asylums and talk about a cowgirl from Oklahoma by the name of Lucille Mulhall. But I cannot in good conscience leave the subject without telling what I’ve learned about the barbaric brain surgeon responsible for Rosemary Kennedy’s lobotomy, the operation that permanently incapacitated her at the young age of 23. Rosemary had been acting in an agitated behavior, according to her father, Joseph P. Kennedy, throwing fits and showing interest in boys, and he sought an operation to settle her down. Two doctors were in the operating room that day in 1941: Dr. Walter Freeman, the director of the laboratories at St. Elizabeth’s Hospital in Washington, D.C., together with his partner, James W. Watts, MD, from the University of Virginia.
Dr. Freeman was obsessed with finding a cure for mental illness. In the day before psychiatric drugs, mentally ill patients were shuttered away in institutions like St. Elizabeth’s. Shock therapy, pioneered in the thirties, though not completely successful, had effectively reduced some psychiatric symptoms in agitated patients, rendering them calmer for a time following treatment. Psychiatrists like Dr. Freeman wanted to find the locus of mental illness of the brain. They understood that there were regions of the brain and were looking for surgical answers instead of just locking people up for life. Freeman, however, was not a surgeon but a neurologist. He was wildly ambitious and longed to achieve the lasting fame of his grandfather, a pioneer brain surgeon, once the president of the American Medical Association. Freeman was determined to find a procedure that would root out the defect in the brain that he believed responsible for mental illness.
Freeman discovered the work of a Portuguese neurologist named Egas Moniz who had performed a radical new operation on a group of 20 mental patients. By taking small corings of their brains, Moniz asserted, it had been possible to rid a third of these patients of their symptoms. Moniz didn’t explain why this worked. He had a crude notion that people “who are mentally ill are sort of obsessed, he called them fixed ideas. And that these fixed ideas probably resided in some way in the frontal lobes.”
Along with Dr. Watts, Freeman began to perform lobotomies, or surgeries on the frontal lobes. After several operations, Dr. Freeman called his operation a success. According to Edward Shorter, Medical Historian, “Freeman’s definition of success is that the patients are no longer agitated. That doesn’t mean that you’re cured, that means they could be discharged from the asylum, but they were incapable of carrying on normal social life. They were usually demobilized and lacking in energy. And they were that on a permanent basis.” Many had to be retaught how to use the toilet. They were definitely not the same persons they were before the operation.
Why didn’t the medical establishment stop Drs. Freeman and Watts from performing this radical and untested procedure? This was back in the day when it was considered unethical for doctors to criticize their peers – plus, Dr. Freeman manipulated the press in his favor. He proclaimed he’d found a cure for mental illness. Soon he was receiving glowing reviews. The Washington Star called prefrontal lobotomy “One of the greatest surgical innovations of this generation.” The New York Times called it “surgery of the soul,” and declared it “history making.”
It gets worse. Freeman decided that there was a simpler way to get into the brain than through the top of the skull, as he had done with Rosemary Kennedy. He decided that the skull was thinner behind the eye and that he could make an incision there with an ice pick. Freeman “would hammer the ice pick into the skull just above the tear duct and wiggle it around.”
transorbital lobotomy
He began to travel around the nation in his own personal van, which he called his “lobotomobile”, hawking this new procedure which he performed with a gold ice pick, and training other doctors in his methods. He even performed a few lobotomies in hotel rooms. Before he was stopped and the lobotomy discredited, Walter Freeman had performed over 3,500 lobotomies. His medical license was revoked when one of his patients died during a lobotomy. Nevertheless, he continued to tour the country in his lobotomobile, visiting his former patients, until his death from cancer in 1972.
Lisa's History Room 
correction:
Water Freeman photo found @:
https://lisawallerrogers.wordpress.com/2009/01/16/266/
need larger hi-res file please so can you please help with source
info ?
Thanks, Marty
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Hi, Marty, I emailed you the photo I have. I wish I could remember the source but I don’t. Poke around Google images, I guess. Lisa
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Hi Im doing a research and I can not find who Dr. WILLIAM kING was and what was he known for? in connection with Dr. FREEMAN. ” THE LOBOTOMIST? And also why did mainstream medicine ao along with Dr. Freeman? THank you.
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Hi, Gaby. I don’t know of Dr. William King; try wikipedia. I don’t think mainstream medicine followed Dr. Freeman but there were those – like Joe Kennedy – who thought his approach to medicine was “cutting edge” and blindly trusted him.
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Thank you, God bless!
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Hi Lisa,
I am doing some research on Freeman & would appreciate it if you could
e-mail me the 2 pictures (Freeman head shot & Freeman performing lobotomy) used in your article (highest resolution possible).
Are you still interested? Do you want me to advise you of other photos I might locate?
Thanks so much.
whisper.gidion@verizon.net
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Hello. I have been asked for Walter Freeman photos before. I believe the best source is the Columbia University Library. I don’t own or have images that would be of any use to you. Sorry!
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Thanks, Lisa.
Will do.
Gidion
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I was taking a walk when I realized that it is not Columbia but George Washington Univ. that has some material on Freeman. Also, you might research what library/univ has a psychiatry archive that is prominent.
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My name is Gary Carter and I am a local historian of the old Columbus State Hospital that was loacted here in Columbus, Ohio. I am trying to find some proof that that Dr Walter Freeman performed his transorbital lobotomy at the hospital. I have found some mention but no hard proof, hopefully you can help me.
Thanks
Gary Carter
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Gary, contact George Washington University library for info on Freeman and surf the web. Good luck. Get back with me if those leads turn up nothing and I’ll see what I can do.
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I have been working on my next book and Dr. Freemen was in ohio dearing 1953 to 1957 where he did 200 of the
lobotomy some at Columbus state hospital.
you may fiend this on the web hope this helps you out.
author C.L Malone
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Carol, thanks.
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Thanks for the update.
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Gary Carter, my father in laws brother was a patient at Columbus State Hospital, the last time he was seen there was in 1945, do you know where I could find records on patients as to if they are dead or alive, where they might have been transferred too. Any information would be helpful. Thank you
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Contact the hospital.
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You might want to check with the Ohio Historical Society here in Columbus, Ohio, they have old records of patients at the different institutions. I am also a collector of the old State Hospital, I have some information on patients also, but not as much as the Historical Society. You can contact me statehosp@aol.com. I would be more than glad to check and see if I have any information for you.
Gary
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This article makes Walter Freeman seem much more “barbaric” than I believe he actually was. 1/3 of his patients returned home for periods of atleast 5 years before relapse and although they experienced some character change many felt that the operation changed them for the better. Several of his former transorbital lobotomy patients continued their previous musical careers and became quite famous. Others continued on to be psychologists themselves (from the biography: The Lobotomist by Jack El-Hai). I disagree with both his prefrontal and transorbital lobotomies, however he was just trying to help the patients and fulfill theirs and their families hopes that they could become productive members of societies. His ice pick technique, although gruesome sounding, and sometimes creating terrible side effects, actually proved to be more successful than the prefrontal lobotomies. And he did not just ” decided that there was a simpler way to get into the brain than through the top of the skull”, he was trying to avoid unesseary cerebral drilling by utilizing an exsisting opening to the brain and used a technique created by the italian Dr. Ammarro Fiamberti (El-Hai). He was also a caring physician, visiting his patients until his death (as you mentioned), and sent and recieved thousands of letters/christmas cards between his former patients. I have found these facts while doing a research paper for a psychology class and am in no way an expert, but I feel this article simply characterizes freeman as a villain, when really he was just a man trying to help the mentally ill, sometimes putting the possibility of great success over the liklihood of death or other tragic side effects.
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Michael, thank you for your comments.
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I agree completly with you. He should have looked closer at the side effects but he seemed to care. It was a bit of an odd way of going about it but he took the rest of his life going around with his patients. The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
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Let’s be realistic here…he was a nutcase and a barbarian
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I am appalled that Walter Freeman was allowed to go from mental hospital to mental hospital performing lobotomies! I saw a documentary on this one time and while the patient was under a type of local anesthesia, but wide awake, he would pound in the ice pick through the corner of the patient’s eye, then having the patient recite the Lord’s prayer, or say the alphabet while he swished the ice pick back and forth like a windshield wiper. He would stop when the patient could not longer recite what they were saying! He was a nutcase that was allowed way too much leeway practicing on mental patients like they were guinea pigs!
Joe Kennedy should have been put in prison for allowing this procedure on his daughter! She was “interested in boys” he said. I would think that a very normal behaviour for a 23 year old woman! She may have had a mental disorder which caused her rash behaviour, but that is hardly a reason for having such a drastic procedure done. More than likely, Mr. Kennedy was afraid she would embarrass the family so he quietly “shut her up”. So very sad.
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I’m doing a study for class. Is there anything i need to hear about dr.walter freeman?
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I’m not sure what you are asking.
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This has haunted me since presented on PBS, 2009. As I recall a conversation with someone who reported he was a small boy whose relationship with his step-mother resulted in his “treatment”, he was in Southern California. Am I to correctly understand this Dr traversed the US doing this? My brief search isn’t revealing validation of this but if someone has a semblance of a time-line, it may allow me to put unanswered grief to rest, now, 4 years later. This is haunting by disbelief a [trusted] person of [authority] could perpetrate carnage of this dimension, perhaps truth will quell rather than the
[Lack of] of information. Thank you
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Hi, IviBre, Dr. Freeman was given unwarranted trust and did much damage.
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Could not Rosemary’s sister Eunice have cared for her at home? This story has never made sense to me.
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See: Spencer Hospital for the Insane, located in W.V.. The Gov of WV ordered it closed in 1989. facts : 50,000 people suffered or died from this ice pick practice.. One doctor; Dr Moniz, was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1949 for his hand in these mind games !. Thank you Lisa, Claudia Archer
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[…] the US are now treated for the disorder, in a development that doesn’t seem a million miles from Walter Freeman’s lobotomy bus. But the question appears to overlook the scale of the problem on our own […]
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[…] Franklin’s husband Walter Freeman (II) was  a neurologist famous for having introduced the Freeman-Watts prefrontal lobotomy procedure— (His papers are archived at George Washington University; there is even a PBS documentary […]
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