My Lobotomy: A Memoir
by By Fleming, Charles and Dully, Howard
Category: Biography & Autobiography , Personal Memoirs

In this heartfelt memoir from one of the youngest recipients of the transorbital lobotamy, Howard Dully shares the story of a painfully dysfunctional childhood, a misspent  youth, his struggle to claim the life that was taken from him, and his redemption.At twelve, Howard Dully was guilty of the same crimes as other boys his age: he was  moody and messy, rambunctious with his brothers, contrary just to prove a point,  and perpetually at odds with his parents. Yet somehow, this normal boy became one  of the youngest people on whom Dr. Walter Freeman performed his barbaric transorbital—or  ice pick—lobotomy.Abandoned by his family within a year of the surgery, Howard  spent his teen years in mental institutions, his twenties in jail, and his thirties  in a bottle. It wasn’t until he was in his forties that Howard began to pull his  life together. But even as he began to live the “normal” life he had been denied,  Howard struggled with one question: Why?There were only three people who would know the truth: Freeman, the man who performed  the procedure; Lou, his cold and demanding stepmother who brought Howard to the doctor’s  attention; and his father, Rodney. Of the three, only Rodney, the man who hadn’t  intervened on his son’s behalf, was still living. Time was running out. Stable and  happy for the first time in decades, Howard began to search for answers.Through his research, Howard  met other lobotomy patients and their families, talked with one of Freeman’s sons  about his father’s controversial life’s work, and confronted Rodney about his complicity.  And, in the archive where the doctor’s files are stored, he finally came face to  face with the truth.Revealing what happened to a child no one—not his father, not  the medical community, not the state—was willing to protect, My Lobotomy exposes  a shameful chapter in the history of the treatment of mental illness. Yet, ultimately,  this is a powerful and moving chronicle of the life of one man.