He understood, or he acted like he did. Nothing seemed to faze him. He sat back. He listened. He took notes. Later—that visit, or another visit, I’m not sure—he gave me some inkblots to look at. I’d never seen any before, and I thought they were weird, and kind of neat. The pictures reminded me of bats and things. I saw women in some of them. I told Freeman that. He just smiled and took notes. I had no idea, of course, what he was writing down.
But this is what his notes said about our first visit:
Howard is a rather tall, slender, somewhat withdrawn type of individual. The first interview today was largely in the matter of getting acquainted. I spoke first of his interest in mechanical things and he began to talk about his bicycle and how the handlebars have been poorly adjusted; he was trying to do something about them. But he also spoke of recently patching a tire five times in one day, after which he got a new tire. But he likes his old bicycle, even though it’s only a 26". He told about his paper route which brings him some $20 each month and he’s saving up to get a record player, but he finds he spends his money, sometimes without too much thinking about it. He’s helped his half-brother George on three occasions, yet this morning when he asked George to help him wrap the papers in wax paper (there was a little shower) George refused, and I could see there was a good deal of resentment on Howard’s part. We also talked about his interest in science. He’s interested in diagrams and animals but he curled up his nose when it came to describing the dissection of a frog’s stomach. When he had started, he talked fairly freely, said that when it’s a question of being out on a hike he likes to get off the beaten path and go up the sides of hills, the dry-water courses and so on, but that when he goes with a crowd the leader insists on sticking to the well-worn paths and keeps him from climbing trees and doing other things he’d like to. He’s been fishing only twice and caught fish only once so this is a phase to be opened. He goes around Lake Tahoe for a week in the summertime and sometimes in the winter, has done some skiing but no water skiing.
I don’t remember how the first visit ended, but when Lou told me I would have to see Freeman again, I was happy. I remember looking forward to it.
One week later, I was back in his office. Freeman took more notes:
Howard is rather evasive talking about things that go on in the home. He drew me a floor plan of the house. This was drawn fairly competently. He says that in the morning he gets out early and delivers his papers; he has a new bicycle now which seems to be fine; it has three speeds and good brakes so that he can get around the hills. He gets home in time for breakfast which consists of orange juice and cereal and toast, with once in a while an egg, but he seems to be satisfied with it, and after school he has some chores to do around the house which he doesn’t talk much about. It seems that Mr. Dully is down for breakfast but he takes very little part in the family circle since, when he comes home, about all he does is to slump down in a chair in front of the TV or start reading. He has to go out three or four evenings a week. Howard is closest to George and Howard believes he gets more than his share of the punishment but says that George is cleverer at avoiding discovery and often gets by with things that he would be punished for. The school work seems difficult for Howard even tho’ he does study he doesn’t seem to recall things, and he does poorly on the tests. He was talking about the ancient Chinese civilization, which they are doing in Social Studies now; this doesn’t seem to interest him at all. Nothing really seems to interest him. He gets to playing checkers and particularly chess with George and usually beats him. He doesn’t mention much about Brian or the older brother. Things have to be more or less prodded out of him, and while not being evasive, he doesn’t convey much information.
Another week later, on November 9, I was back. This time Freeman gave me a physical. He reported that I was sixty-two inches tall, weighed ninety-five pounds, and had pouches under my eyes and big hands and feet. He found everything about me normal—reflexes, “sensibility,” blood pressure, and so on—but didn’t have much else to say about me.
So, one more week after that, I was back again. It was almost like Freeman couldn’t figure out what to do with me. On November 16, he wrote about me making the rounds on my paper route, about my apparent lack of interest in sports, about my skill at chess—“He can find very few people to play with him since he can lick his father and George without half trying.” Freeman suggested I might want to go on a “ramble” in the Black Mountains with him. I said that Sundays were out because that was my time with Orville and Evelyn Black. I complained to Freeman a little about how I always seemed to get blamed no matter what went wrong. “They come down on him like a ton of bricks,” Freeman wrote. But, he added, “Howard does not dwell on the fact that he is discriminated against…”
This must have been frustrating to Lou. She had found a doctor who seemed to listen to her, and who seemed to take her problems with me seriously. But he had seen me four times, and from his notes it would appear that the more time he spent with me the more normal he found me. He even wanted to take me hiking.
So Lou turned up the gas a little.
“Mrs. Dully came in for a talk about Howard. Things have gotten much worse during the past two or three months and she can barely endure it.”
The date was November 30. It wasn’t even two months since their first visit. They’d been talking the whole time. This new tone—about things getting much worse—was ominous.
She has to keep the boys constantly separated in order to avoid something serious happening, and she now has to protect even the dog because Howard will pretend to pet the dog and at the same time twist the collar around so as to strangle the animal. Howard does sneaky little things, pinching and sticking pins in his little brother, and always seems to have the idea that everybody is against him.
Mrs. Dully thinks that her husband sits down in front of the television and goes to sleep because he doesn’t want to hear any of the problems that are so pressing. She feels she is unable to reach him because he just closes up. She thinks that maybe Howard’s uncle, who is looking after the youngest brother, a mental defective, might be willing to take on Howard if Mr. Dully approves of this. I think it would be pretty much of a shame to wish Howard on anybody.
Freeman had heard enough. It was time for action. He told Lou that it was possible the children’s ward at the Langley Porter Clinic—a famous neuropsychiatric institute attached to the University of California in San Francisco—might have room for me, or that someone from Children’s Services might be able to help.
Freeman concluded that set of notes by saying, “Howard has an extremely individualistic approach to things, and if any attempt is made to control him he takes it personally and thinks it’s all part of the persecution that is constantly going on.”
But nothing would really fix me, Freeman said, except a lobotomy.
“I explained to Mrs. Dully,” Freeman said in his notes, “that Howard was unapproachable by psychotherapy since I believed him to be essentially a schizophrenic, and that the family should consider the possibility of changing Howard’s personality by means of transorbital lobotomy. Mrs. Dully said it was up to her husband, that I would have to talk with him and explain the impossible situation that was arising in the home and make it stick.”
It had taken less than two months, and four visits from Lou, and four visits with me, to convince Dr. Freeman that a transorbital lobotomy was the only answer to our family’s problems. That’s how easily the decision was made. Lou told Freeman it was up to my dad. Freeman told Lou he might confer with Dr. Kirk McGuire, a family friend who was the namesake of my baby brother, and get him on the team.
The really sad part is that this decision took place on November 30, 1960: It was my twelfth birthday. Lou went home that evening to tell my father what he had to do.
The following day, my dad was in Freeman’s office. December 1, 1960, was a Thursday. My dad had to take time off work—either from teaching, from Whitecliff Market, or from Koda
k—to make the appointment. He must have understood it was serious.
If not, Freeman set him straight right away.
Mr. Dully came in for a review of the situation, and I gave it as my opinion that Howard was a schizophrenic and that unless something was done pretty promptly I thought the situation would be irreversible. Mr. Dully gave me two bits of new information; in the first place, [Howard] was very devoted to his own mother and never seemed to get along with his step-mother, although she tried to win him over. In the second place, Howard has been heard repeatedly talking to himself and Mr. Dully has tended to disregard this as he has the other things, but when it’s called to his attention he recognizes that possibly it is serious. He will talk the matter over with Mrs. Dully.
I will never know what my dad and Lou talked about. But two days later, their decision was made. Someone, probably Lou, phoned Freeman with the news, which he recorded in his notes: “Mr. and Mrs. Dully have apparently decided to have Howard operated on; I suggested they come in for further discussions and not tell Howard anything about it.”
My uncle Orville told me many years later that my dad told him that he “felt like God” when he signed the papers giving Freeman permission to give me the lobotomy.
The following week my father and stepmother visited Freeman together for the first time, to discuss my lobotomy.
Mr. Dully came in with Mrs. Dully today to talk over Howard’s forthcoming operation as they are convinced something will have to be done. Mrs. Robinson [this was Lou’s sister] called up shortly before and stressed the need of tender, loving care after Howard was operated on, and I assured her that everything would be done.
Mr. and Mrs. Dully said that Howard was rather disappointed that he wasn’t going to come in for a further interview today but I suggested it be postponed for a week, and that I will tell him he has to go to the hospital for a series of examinations and spend the night there. I called Doctors Hospital to make arrangements…
On December 14, I visited Freeman with my father and Lou. We saw Freeman separately. I must have waited while they saw him first. According to Freeman’s notes, the family had some second thoughts about what was about to happen.
Howard is behaving much better this past week or two, and really pleasant at times, so that the family has had doubts about the desirability of his going through with the operation. These doubts were enhanced by the attitude of the minister and also of an aunt, but one of Mr. Dully’s cousins knew somebody who’d been operated on and she is much better, so having no real encouragement from other sources, Mr. Dully has decided to go through with the operation.
It was like the train had already left the station, and everyone knew about it but me. I was the only person on the train, and I was the only one who didn’t know where it was going. It was agreed that no one would tell me about the operation.
Then Freeman had me come in for one final chat.
I asked Howard about his recollections of his own mother and he was able to give me a few rather objective details but he didn’t go into any discussion of his attitude toward her and his desperation at losing her. He says that he recently had the experience of hearing somebody in his room rather angrily talking at him; he turned on the light and there was nobody there. He doesn’t remember the words but he was very alarmed. In regard to talking to himself he says he just talks to himself; he doesn’t answer any spirit voices. He has a certain fascination with license plate numbers and also with words like “spring” that have a number of different meanings. I told him he was going into the hospital for some examinations; he was first afraid he might be hurt, but then glad that he’d be missing school.
That was Freeman’s last entry before my lobotomy. I was going into the hospital for some examinations.
I liked the idea. I liked the attention. I’d get to miss school. I’d get fussed over in the hospital by a bunch of cute nurses in white uniforms. I’d get to lie in bed and watch TV. Plus I’d get to eat hospital food. I’d probably get to eat Jell-O, which we never had at home.
The hospital would be an adventure. I knew there was nothing wrong with me, so there was nothing to be afraid of. It couldn’t be anything bad. If it was going to be something bad, they’d tell me—my dad, or Freeman, at least—right?
Doctors General Hospital is a small private institution in San Jose. It looks more like a set of doctors’ offices than a hospital. It’s a long, low building, painted all white, with room for maybe fifty or sixty patients.
I was admitted as one of them on the afternoon of Thursday, December 15, 1960.
My dad drove me down there. Lou stayed home. I don’t remember saying good-bye to her, or to George or Brian. I do remember having a sense of adventure, of playing hooky. I got to go to the hospital and they didn’t. They had to go to school.
It was a sunny day, and my impressions of the hospital are all sunny ones. After we did the admitting paperwork, they put me in a bright, yellow room. My dad said good-bye without making any big deal out of it, and I was on my own.
I got undressed and put on the gown with the opening in back, which felt kind of ridiculous. Just like I’d expected, there were nurses clucking over me.
It was a private room, so I got to watch whatever I wanted on TV. But after a while I was interrupted by the nurses, who said the doctors had to do some tests. They took some blood. They listened to my heart. Then I went down to another room where they took some X-rays of my chest and then my head. The radiologist noted that my skull was normal, my pineal was not visualized—whatever that means—but that the frontal sinuses were “extremely small and poorly developed.” They gave me the stamp of approval, and sent me back to my room.
That’s it? Those were the tests? Fine. I wasn’t worried about a thing. I knew I wasn’t sick. Nothing hurt. Plus, when dinner came, I did get Jell-O. It wasn’t all it was cracked up to be, and the meal was a little skimpy, but no one shouted at me. No one made me go eat by myself in the other room. I got to watch TV and eat dinner at the same time. I went to bed that night feeling cheerful.
I don’t remember whether the nurses gave me anything to make me sleep. Was there a pill? Was there a shot? It seems like there would have been, but I don’t remember it. I don’t remember anything that happened next.
Freeman’s admittance orders, written on the stationery bearing his 15 Main Street address in Los Altos, said this: “Please admit to Doctors Hospital Thurs. Dec. 15 at 3pm for transorbital lobotomy Dec. 16 at 1:30pm.” His pre-op orders called for a complete blood count, measuring the “bleeding and clotting times,” a urinalysis, an X-ray of my skull, and an electrocardiogram.
So far, so good. Then it says, “May be up and about until time for operation. Regular diet. If restless at night give him sodium amytal at 10:30.” Sodium amytal is a barbiturate; it would certainly sedate me. That makes sense, too.
But Freeman had a warning for the nurses: “Avoid escape. The patient is full of tricks. Nurse not to leave him alone at any time. Is not to know why he is in the hospital except for examinations.”
Escape? Why would I try to escape? Where would I go? I was a twelve-year-old kid in a hospital gown. My father and stepmother and doctor had all told me I was in the hospital for tests. I had no reason to believe they were lying to me. They were treating me like the Birdman of Alcatraz, but I was just a kid who had been looking forward to Jell-O.
I don’t remember waking up the next morning. I don’t remember being prepared for surgery. I don’t remember seeing Freeman. I don’t remember anything of that morning. That whole Friday disappeared.
Then it was over.
I remember waking up the next day, which would have been Saturday. I felt bad. My head hurt. I had a fever. They kept taking blood, and giving me shots. I thought something had gone wrong. What happened with the tests?
Freeman’s notes tell the story: “Howard entered Doctors Hospital on the 15th and yesterday I performed transorbital lobotomy. The only thing that seemed to bother Howard w
as the needles he’d received on several occasions.”
Freeman was assisted in the operating room by Dr. Robert Lichtenstein. His notes on the procedure sounded almost like a carpentry project:
I introduced the orbitoclasts [the name Freeman had given to his personally designed lobotomy knives] under the eyelids 3 cm from the midline, aimed them parallel with the nose and drove them to a depth of 5 cm. I pulled the handles laterally, returned them halfway and drove them 2 cm deeper. Here I touched the handles over the nose, separated them 45 degrees and elevated them 50 degrees, bringing them parallel for photography before removal.
In other words, he poked these knitting needles into my skull, through my eye sockets, and then swirled them around until he felt he had scrambled things up enough. Then he took a picture of me with the needles in, and that was that.
To get me properly sedated, Freeman had administered a few jolts of electroshock. I don’t know how much was typical, but I got some extra.
“Howard came around quickly after the first shock,” Freeman wrote. “I eventually gave him four, after which he was quite slow in recovering. I think it was one more than necessary.”
After the procedure, Freeman wrote that there was “an escape of a small amount of blood-stained fluid” from each eye socket. I did not get much swelling, he said. “However, he did have a considerable amount of vomiting during the night and I prescribed Dramamine 50 mg for its control. He’d been incontinent once during the night. He resisted efforts to get his eyes open and complained about the needles that were being given him. His temperature, pulse and respiration were quite normal.”
My Lobotomy Page 10