Psychosurgery

Psychosurgery is a term for surgeries of the brain or autonomic nervous system involving the severance of neural pathways to effect a change in behaviour, usually to treat or alleviate severe mental illness. The procedures typically considered psychosurgery are now almost universally shunned as inappropriate, due in part to the emergence of less-invasive methods of treatment such as psychiatric medication. Although the term psychosurgery might imply a broad class of treatments, in reality, it is confined to variations on two themes:

Famous people who underwent lobotomy

• Frances Farmer: Farmer is the person perhaps best associated in the public mind with lobotomy; however, the biographer who initially alleged the lobotomy admitted in a court proceeding he had made it up.
• Phineas Gage: Famously suffered an accident in 1848 which severely damaged his frontal lobe. The effects were comparable to a surgical lobotomy.
• Josef Hassid: Polish violin prodigy and schizophrenic who died at 26.
• Rosemary Kennedy: Sister of John F. Kennedy.
• Rose Williams: Sister of Tennessee Williams.