“If you don’t have your brain, you can never change your mind.”
Those words were said to me last night by my wife Ginger and they ignited my memories and thoughts.
In the early 1970s, under heavy pressure from me, Ted Kennedy
reluctantly held Health Committee hearings to investigate the resurgence
of lobotomy and newer forms of psychiatric brain mutilation or
psychosurgery. Senator Kennedy favored the treatments; he thought they
were scientific.
I was campaigning against a resurgence of psychosurgery throughout
Europe and North America by speaking at conferences here and abroad,
testifying in court and in Congress, addressing federal agencies,
writing legislation for the creation of a federal Psychosurgery
Commission, organizing opposition, and writing scientific articles and
book chapters. It took several years out of my life.
Eventually my efforts brought most psychosurgery in the Western World to a stop.
At the Senate hearing on psychosurgery, Kennedy challenged me in a
brief debate in which he asked rhetorically if I would be against heart
surgery, too, because it sometimes damages the heart to improve its
function, for example, by slowing down dangerous arrhythmias. I replied,
in effect, “Senator Kennedy, when you damage your heart, it may affect
the circulation of your blood through your bloodstream; but when you
damage your brain you impair the expression of your eternal soul here on
Earth.”
I must admit it was an angry remark, and it did me no good, because the New York Times
struck back at me. The newspaper falsely claimed that I was against
psychosurgery on religious grounds, rather than on ethical and
scientific bases. My testimony had in fact been very scientific.
That night, the confrontation between Kennedy and me appeared on TV
in Washington, DC. Kennedy staff expurgated it from the official
transcript of the hearing. I have often wished for the original TV clip
of my brief debate with the senator.
The confrontation between myself and Kennedy epitomizes the problem
in psychiatry. Too many psychiatrists view the brain with no more
reverence than the heart or liver. If you receive a liver transplant,
you are still there; but if you receive a brain transplant, you are
gone. And if you are afflicted with psychoactive drugs, you will find it
more difficult to know you are there.
When we force people to take psychiatric drugs, or lie to get them to
take the drugs, we are not only harming the organ of their body called
the brain—we are harming their capacity to think and to feel, and to
know and to express themselves. We are limiting their personality and
identity, and the expression of their soul or spirit.
Drugs, shock treatment and lobotomy all make it much harder for
individuals to understand and overcome their emotional problems. These
injuries to the brain and its functioning make it difficult and
sometimes impossible for them to make better choices in their lives.
They are likely to remain stuck in one place or to get worse over time.
As Ginger’s quote so aptly put it, “If you don’t have your brain, you
can never change your mind.”
