The Lobotomist is a biographical documentary, produced by PBS and written and co-directed by Barak Goodman about Walter Freeman a neurologist and psychiatrist who fought to cure the mentally ill when no therapies yet existed with which to do so. The Lobotomist is based upon the book of the same title, written by Jack El-Hai. The film shows black & white video footage of mental hospitals during the 1920s and 1930s; showing the awful conditions in which the severely mentally ill were required to live. Often, the film explains, hospitalization was considered the only treatment option for the mentally ill.

Dr. Freeman studied the living and the dead mentally ill, determined to find the abnormality within the brain that resulted in mental illness. (In his day, it was presumed that mental illness was simply an abnormality within the brain). In 1936 he stumbled across a study done by Portuguese neurosurgeon Egas Moniz, who had removed a portion of mentally ill patients’ frontal lobes and noticed a change in behavior. This led Dr. Freeman to utilize the lobotomy as a universal cure for mental illness. 

Because this was the only real treatment offered up to the medical community, the community seemed to accept this unorthodox procedure without much probing. The media accepted Dr. Freeman’s “cure-all” without much inquiry as well. The New York Times called the lobotomy “a surgery of the soul.”

During the film, family members of patients Dr. Freeman lobotomized speak of the doctor and of their loved ones – prior to and following the lobotomies. Some family members saw Dr. Freeman as a hero, others as a monster. The patients did sometimes show improvement of their original ailments – less anxious, depressed, and suicidal – however, they often showed decreased inhibition, intellect, and motivation. With the development of a drug called Thorazine, the medical community began to question the lobotomy often declared it to be antiquated and questionable.

Dr. Freeman performed 2,900 lobotomies in his career, nineteen of whom were children under the age of 18. The doctor was stripped of his hospital privileges when his final lobotomy patient resulted in death. Soon after this he retired and spent the rest of his life searching for patients he had treated with this drastic procedure, determined to prove that the lobotomy was a valid and effective treatment.

The film is a fine depiction of mental health care in the beginning of the 20^th Century. Anyone who takes issue with mental health care today ought to view this film and see just how far treatment methods have come and consider just how much worse off the mentally ill could be today if not for those advances that have been made.