Monkeys like Becky

The Catalan Culture in New York festival earlier this year included a showing of Joaquim Jordà and Núria Villazán's 1999 film "Monos como Becky" ("Monkeys like Becky"):

"One of the mainstays of the Barcelona School of the 60s, Joaquim Jordà later turned his talents to screenwriting before returning to direction in the 90s. Monkeys Like Becky shows his old subversive spirit still shines brightly. One of the oddest mixtures of reality and fiction recently seen, the film is based on the true story of the Nobel Prize winning Portuguese neurologist Egaz Moniz. In the early 30s, Moniz attended a conference in London in which an American biologist presented a docile, rather charming monkey named Becky; the biologist then showed a film in which Becky was shown to have been formerly a wild, savage beast. The transformation was said to be caused by an incision into the central lobe of the Becky's brain. It dawns on Moniz that such a procedure might prove effective with schizophrenics, and thus the practice of mental lobotomies was born. Using both staged sequences and documentary footage, Jordà and Villazán wryly capture the intersection of science, psychiatry and social control."

The All Movie Guide entry for "Monkeys like Becky" says that director Joaquim Jordà himself underwent a psychosurgical operation. Other reviews say the same about Jôao Maria Pinto, the actor who plays Egas Moniz and one review says that they both had lobotomies, so I don't know what to believe.

Physiologist John Farquar Fulton who, along with psychologist Carlyle Jacobsen, conducted the experiments on Becky claimed to have been the inspiration behind Egas Moniz' decision to operate on mental patients. Here he relates his account in the Alpha Omega Alpha lecture read at the Montreal Neurological Institute, 8 January 1948:

"The operation of frontal lobotomy was introduced as a result of a brief report made at the International Neurological Congress at London in 1935 by Carlyle Jacobsen and myself on behavioral changes which developed in two of our chimpanzees, Becky and Lucy, following bilateral ablation of the frontal association areas. Their story can be briefly told.
In the summer of 1933 we had word from Dr Perrin Long of Johns Hopkins that he wished to dispose of two tame chimpanzees which had been used for the common cold project. He said that they were both accustomed to human beings, having been brought up in the laboratory since their early infancy. The opportunity to use these animals for frontal lobe studies seemed ideal for they could be readily managed. One was a very affectionate animal (Becky) and the other a crotchety old maid who had resisted Dr Long's advances for some three years. Dr Carlyle Jacobsen, who at that time was developing training techniques for a study of the frontal lobe function, took the two animals for a period of intensive training which continued from October, 1933 to March, 1934. The chimpanzees proved ideal subjects, co-operating effectively in all of the training procedures which consited of the delayed-reaction test, problem boxes, and another, more involved, procedure known as the stick-and-platform problem that Dr Malmo has no doubt described to you.
Both animals were operated upon in March, 1934, within a few days of one another, one frontal area being removed in each instance (areas 9, 10, 11, and 12 in the Brodmann scheme). The animals were then tested for another trhee months but no sign of deficit or behavioral change could be detected. In June, the second frontal area was removed from each animal, again within a day or two of one another, and every effort was made to have the lesions both symmetrical and equivalent for each animal. Following this procedure there was no sign of reflex change in either animal and on superficial inspection their cage behaviour did not seem to have altered particularly. On closer scrutiny, however, it was evident that a profound change had occurred, for prior to the second operation both animals showed frustrational behaviour, i.e., when unrewarded after having made the wrong choice in the discrimination test or in the delayed re-action procedure, both animals had temper tantrums and, if unrewarded many times in succession, signs of experimental neurosis became apparent. Following the second operation the animals seemed devoid of emotional expression. If a wrong choice were made, the animal shrugged its shoulders and went on dooing something else - as Jacobsen said picturesquely: "It was as if the animal had joined the happiness cult of the Elder Micheaux and placed its burdens on the Lord." Animals with bilateral ablation also failed the double stick-and-platform test....
Following the paper in which the behavioral changes in our two chimpanzees were described at London in August of 1935, Dr Egaz Moniz of Lisbon arose and put the question that if frontal lobe removal prevents the development of experimental neuroses in animals and eliminates frustrational behaviour, why would it not be feasible to relieve anxiety states in man by surgical means? At the time I was a little startled by the suggestion for I had envisaged a bilateral lobectomy which, though possible, would be a very formidable undertaking in a human being. Dr Moniz, as you are well aware, had other ideas and within a year he had developed his leucotome, carried out leucotomies on some 50 cases and published a book on the subject."

Egas Moniz himself however downplayed the contribution of Becky and Lucy to the development of psychosurgery. In his 1956 account, "How I succeeded in performing the prefrontal leukotomy", he devotes only seven lines to the work of Fulton and Jacobsen in the midst of a wider discussion of experiments on animals and the results of damage to the frontal lobes in humans. There is no mention of the conference in London.