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This memorial is dedicated to the victims of lobotomy. Psychosurgery.org seeks to honor their memories and make certain that their tragedy is not forgotten.

Lobotomy was not a procedure on the fringe of science. It was a mainstream treatment advocated by many highly-educated physicians and prestigious institutions, praised in breathless news articles, and touted as an amazing neurosurgical advance. The inventor of the operation, Egas Moniz, was even awarded a Nobel Prize for it.

If we truly wish to avoid repeating the psychiatric treatment mistakes of the past, we must study the fiasco of lobotomy and related psychosurgeries with unflinching honesty. In the words of Jeffrey Schwartz, a research psychiatrist at UCLA:

“We as a profession had one generation of humility after the era of lobotomy, but it’s gone. We’re now back to a point where the elite of our society believe that the most sophisticated way to treat mental illness is with drugs, magnetic fields, a knife or radiation beam. It’s especially important that we hear the rest of the lobotomy story from people who were there.“