"And sometimes not"

In his book about Henry Cotton (Madhouse: A Tragic Tale of Megalomania and Modern Medicine)Professor of Sociology and Science Studies Andrew Scull muses on the trust we place in psychiatrists:

"As members of a healing profession that likes to trace its lineage back at least as far as classical Greece and the fabled Hippocrates, physicians pronounce themselves the guardians of our physical welfare - and, in the case of that subordinate branch once called by the derisive term of "mad-doctors" and now preferring to own to the title "psychiatrist", our mental welfare as well. Like all of those who make the most well-founded and broadly socially accepted claim to the title of professional, medical men (and these days medical women) operate in an arena where the ordinary disciplines of the marketplace seem to fail, or to perform poorly. As lay people, we lack access to their specialized knowledge and expertise, even though the content of their cognitive world may be quite literally of life and death importance to us. In a poor position to second guess their expert judgments or even, in many instances, to grasp the foundations on which their diagnoses and prescriptions are based, and ill-equipped to assess the quality of the care we are about to receive, we are perforce at their mercy. Elaborate social rituals persuade us to grant these strangers our trust, and reassure us that they are motivated, not by the self-interest of the marketplace - the hidden hand that allegedly guides so much of civil society - but by a higher ethical standard, a genuine concern for our well-being and survival and a willingness to subordinate their interests to ours. And so it sometimes proves.
And sometimes not." (Madhouse: A Tragic Tale of Megalomania and Modern Medicine.Yale University Press, page 276)

The author has this to say about psychosurgery: "Lobotomy, in my judgment, even by the standards of the 1940s ought ultimately to be seen as indefensible, as a number of informed and perspicacious critics argued at the time. But a proper examination of that issue is a debate place and another time." (page 285)

I hopefully asked Professor Scull if he was thinking of writing a book about the history of psychosurgery but sadly it is not on his list of things to do in the immediate future.