We were talking about lobotomies yesterday as part of our novel study and some people wanted to know more.

The first documented case of psychosurgery was in 1888 by Swiss psychiatrist Gottlieb Burckhardt. He claimed success in 50% of patients (3 of 6) Burckhardt was met with overt criticism from his contemporary medical colleagues. The next attempt at this type of surgery did not occur until the mid 1930s which produced many documented success stories and soon became an accepted surgery procedure in many countries. From the late 1930s to the 1970s approximately 100,000 psychosurgeries / lobotomies were performed world-wide.

The first prefrontal lobotomy in the United States was performed in 1936 on 63 year old Alice Hood Hammatt by Dr. Walter Freeman and Dr. James Watts. The doctors started the surgery by making incisions 3 centimeters in length and then using an auger (drill) they made holes in the skull over the left and right frontal lobes. They then inserted a leucotome (a narrow shaft) 4 centimeters straight down through the hole on the left side into the exposed surface of the brain. The entire operation lasted about an hour. Some months after her surgery, Hammatt suffered a convulsion likely related to her surgery. However she continued to live with reduced anxiety and stayed out of mental hospitals. Her husband thought she behaved more normally than ever before after the surgery and called the next five years the happiest of her life. Alice Hammatt contracted pneumonia and died at age 68.

The first transorbital (ice pick) lobotomy was performed in 1946, also by Dr. Walter Freeman. Ionesco was a 29 year-old housewife and mother who was described as violently suicidal. In His Washington D.C. office, Freeman rendered Ionesco unconscious through electroshock. He then inserted an ice pick above her eyeball, banged it through her eye socket into her brain and then swirled it around in a sort of eggbeater motion to scramble the neural connections. The family considered the operation a success and a blessed relief. She lost some memory function but was relatively intact and led a fairly normal life.

Read more here.

I know many of you are keen to see a film adaptation of George Orwell’s 1984. The one we are going to see was released in 1984 and it was the last film of the very talented actor Richard Burton. It is an interesting and at times stunning screen adaptation of the novel about a world in which the government completely controls the masses by controlling their thoughts, altering history and even changing the meaning of words to suit its needs.

Director Michael Radford manages to convey Orwell’s vision by finding that line between the future world of 1984 and the grim postwar world in which Orwell wrote. The protagonist Winston Smith, lives in a world of grim and crushing inhumanity, of bombed factories, bug-infested bedrooms and citizens desperate for the most simple pleasures.

Doesn’t that sound like fun viewing!

This Biopoem is from Michael

WINSTON

intelligent, naive, ++ungood, skeptic

his mother’s son

lover of Julia

who feels alone, insignificant and paranoid

who needs a the truth, freedom and an identity

who fears The Party, restraint and the Thought Police

who gives away his life for rebellion, defiance and revolution

who would like to see Goldstein, life without telescreens, accurate news

resident of Airstrip One

SMITH

A book that you may like to try is Fugitive Pieces by Anne Michaels. It is the story of two men from different generations whose lives are transformed by war. A young boy, Jakob Beer, is rescued from the mud of a buried Polish city during World War II and taken to an island in Greece by an unlikely saviour, the scientist/humanist Athos Roussos. The book is written in an extraordinary lyrical style that makes it very haunting. Good for reading about the Holocaust, WWII, survivor guilt, repressed memories and philosophy.

A very well received film of the novel is presently playing at Rialto in Tauranga. I can’t wait to see it.

As part of the work we are doing on the novel we are looking at propaganda. Go here to read a speech from Joseph Goebbels who was the Reich Minister of Propaganda in Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945. Goebbels gave an annual speech on New Year’s Eve in which he reviewed the old year and sometimes made predictions for the new one. This is the first of the series. He looks back on the first year of National Socialism and declares the revolution over. Think about:

• How does he represent the Nazi Party?
• How does he represent his enemies?
• What techniques of persuasion does he use?

Here is Luke’s Biopoem about Tom Parsons.

Here is another collection of George Orwell resources. It includes a good collection of Nineteen Eighty Four resources including the text of the Times’ original review of 1984 on June 12, 1949.

This is a Biopoem about Winston written by Toby.

This is a Biopoem about Julia written by Rose.

Julia

Calculated, practical, confident, wilful

Daughter of the Party, Woman of Thoughtcrime

Lover of sex, her own personal rebellion, hedonism

Who feels hatred for Big Brother, that the party cannot be beaten, indifferent to truth and lies

Who needs to know that they can’t get inside you, to show fake devotion to the party, to have someone to love

Who fears the Thoughtpolice, room 101, the torture that makes you confess

Who gives Winston something to live for, someone to trust, someone to betray

Who would like to see the removal of telescreens, herself in a dress, a lemon.

Resident of the attic room, Mr Charrington’s shop, London, Airstrip One, Oceania,

Human