Session: Scrutinizing Involuntary Hospitalizations and Coercion in Mental Healthcare
The Feminization of Frontal Lobotomies: A Critical Analysis of the Role of Gender and Queerness in the Lobotomy Era
Saturday, October 14, 2023
9:00 AM – 10:15 AM ET
Location: Iron (Fourth Floor)
The history of frontal lobotomies is fraught with unsafe medical practices and the stigmatization of mental illness. Frontal lobotomies were largely used as a last resort intervention for those diagnosed with severe mental illness for whom psychotherapy wasn’t effective. Transorbital lobotomies, coined “ice pick” lobotomies, were primarily used starting in 1935 until the mid-1950s. Using these techniques, physicians often left patients mentally incapacitated due to inaccuracy and unsterile environments. Harms included frontal lobe damage that led to the loss of personality and identity, leaving patients with a calm, docile demeanor that made their clinical management easier for caretakers. Women, gay men, and lesbians were largely targets of this practice, as they were more likely to be diagnosed as having aberrant, inappropriate behaviors or sexual attractions that required "correcting."
My presentation will critically evaluate aspects of the lobotomy era such as the political and social atmosphere for women and the practice as a form of conversion therapy used to "treat" lesbians and gay men. I will compare transorbital lobotomies as a form of conversion therapy to transphobia in contemporary medicine, concluding that, far from going away, the gender biases against women and negative attitudes toward queer patients that informed the practice of lobotomy are still at work today.