Article ID: CBB953218824

Two Solitudes: Wilder Penfield, Ewen Cameron, and the Search for a Better Lobotomy (2021)

unapi

In the 1940s, Wilder Penfield carried out a series of experimental psychosurgeries with the psychiatrist D. Ewen Cameron. This article explores Penfield’s brief foray into psychosurgery and uses this episode to re-examine the emergence of his surgical enterprise. Penfield’s greatest achievement – the surgical treatment of epilepsy – grew from the same roots as psychosurgery, and the histories of these treatments overlap in surprising ways. Within the contexts of Rockefeller-funded neuropsychiatry and Adolf Meyer’s psychobiology, Penfield’s frontal lobe operations (including a key operation on his sister) played a crucial role in the development of lobotomy in the 1930s. The combination of ambiguous data and the desire to collaborate with a psychiatrist encouraged Penfield to try to develop a superior operation. However, unlike his collaboration with psychiatrists, Penfield’s productive working relationship with psychologists encouraged him to abandon the experimental “gyrectomy” procedure. The story of Penfield’s attempt to find a better lobotomy can help us to examine different forms of interdisciplinarity within biomedicine.

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Authors & Contributors
Raz, Mical
Montgomery, Sarah Fawn
Jęczmińska, Kinga
Maung, Hane Htut
Leblanc, Richard
Janca, Aleksandar
Concepts
Psychiatry
Neurosurgery; psychosurgery
Lobotomy
Therapeutic practice; therapy; treatment
Mental disorders and diseases
Biomedicine
Time Periods
20th century
21st century
20th century, early
19th century
Places
United States
Germany
Canada
South Korea
Montreal (Quebec, Canada)
Puerto Rico
Institutions
Montreal Neurological Institute
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