Lobotomy Quotes

“To get Windows 10 reliable, I had to lobotomise the installed software and USB devices.”
― Steven Magee

“Frontal lobe castration. I guess if she can't cut below the belt she'll do it above the eyes.”
― Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

“In 1949, neurologist Egas Moniz (1874-1955) received a Nobel Prize for his discovery of ‘the therapeutic value of leucotomy in certain psychoses’. Today, prefrontal leucotomy is derided as a barbaric treatment from a much darker age, and it is to be hoped that, one day, so too might antipsychotic drugs.”
― Neel Burton, The Meaning of Madness

“Naispotilas N soitti kirjoittajalle kertoakseen tarinansa: ”Olin nuorena töissä professorin kotiapulaisena. Töitäni lisättiin ja lopulta en niitä kaikkia jaksanut hoitaa, vaan väsyin liiaksi ja jäin sänkyyn makaamaan. Professorin rouva otti yhteyttä äitiini, joka toimitti minut Hattelmalan mielisairaalaan, vaikka en ollut mielisairas, vain väsynyt. En ollut ehtinyt pitkääkään aikaa olla potilaana, kun eräänä iltana hoitajat halusivat ajaa hiukseni. Ymmärsin, että kyse oli aivoleikkaukseen joutumisesta ja säikähdin sekä yritin kieltäytyä. Minun mieltäni ei kuitenkaan asiassa kuultu, äidiltäni oli kysytty jotakin. Aamulla minut nukutettiin ja heräsin side pään ympärillä, haavat ohimolla. Kesti pitkään, ennen kuin ymmärsin mitä minulle oli tapahtunut. Jouduin olemaan mielisairaalassa kymmenen vuotta. Leikkauksessa katkaistiin ilmeisesti unihermot, koska sen jälkeen en ole kyennyt kunnolla nukkumaan. Minusta on leikkauksen jälkeen tuntunut, että olen jotenkin erilainen kuin muut. Eniten minua on loukannut se, että minulta ei kysytty.”
― Risto Vataja, Lobotomia : taustatietoa ja selvitys leikatuista potilaista Suomessa 1946-1969

“Shane lingered over a sickly sweet bit of doggerel comparing accepting Christ into one’s life with turning a pumpkin into a Jack-o-Lantern. “It sounds like God is seriously going to mutilate you.”
Roselyn took the pamphlet from Shane, her eyes flickering over the text. “I always pictured it a bit more like a lobotomy than an evisceration.”
― Thomm Quackenbush, Flies to Wanton Boys

“For some people, working at the Mauna Kea Observatories (MKO) results in the very high altitude lobotomy.”
― Steven Magee

“For some people, working and sleeping at high altitudes results in the hypoxia lobotomy.”
― Steven Magee

“The best thing would perhaps be to remove consciousness surgically in utero, together with irony, criticism and intelligence - all those qualities that are so fragile and so dangerous to existence in general. One might take advantage of this (all in a specialized Psycho-Genetic Institute, akin to the Institute of Zodiacal Semiurgy, where the surgical removal of star signs is practised) to be rid of the Unconscious, the extraction of which, like the extraction of all the irregularities of the genome, would be a great relief for future generations.”
― Jean Baudrillard, Cool Memories V: 2000 - 2004

“Science has and continues to make huge mistakes, and yet continues to arrogantly declare itself as the end all and be all of rational explanation of the universe. What are some of sciences big gaffs? The list is almost endless: the efficacy of frontal lobotomies, The Blank Slate theory (or Tabula rasa), Phlogiston Theory, the definition of the “GENE” (which has changed over and over since it was coined by Johansson in 1909), that we cannot send information faster than the speed of light, classifying humans into the different races, the invention of nuclear weapons, fossil fuels, CFCs (chlorofluorocarbons), leaded petrol and DDT.”
― Laurence Galian, Alien Parasites: 40 Gnostic Truths to Defeat the Archon Invasion!

“Now there is no normal process except death which completely clears the brain from all past impressions; and after death, it is impossible to set it going again. Of all normal processes, sleep comes the nearest to a non-pathological clearing. How often we find that the best way to handle a complicated worry or an intellectual muddle is to sleep over it! However, sleep does not clear away the deeper memories, nor indeed is a sufficiently malignant state of worry compatible with an adequate sleep. We are thus often forced to resort to more violent types of intervention in the memory cycle. The more violent of these involve a surgical intervention into the brain, leaving behind it permanent damage, mutilation, and the abridgment of the powers of the victim, as the mammalian central nervous system seems to possess no powers whatever of regeneration. The principal type of surgical intervention which has been practiced is known as prefrontal lobotomy, and consists in the removal or isolation of a portion of the prefrontal lobe of the cortex. It has recently been having a certain vogue, probably not unconnected with the fact that it makes the custodial care of many patients easier. Let me remark in passing that killing them makes their custodial care still easier. However, prefrontal lobotomy does seem to have a genuine effect on malignant worry, not by bringing the patient nearer to a solution of his problems but by damaging or destroying the capacity for maintained worry, known in the terminology of another profession as the conscience. More generally, it appears to limit all aspects of the circulating memory, the ability to keep in mind a situation not actually presented.
The various forms of shock treatment—electric, insulin, metrazol—are less drastic methods of doing a very similar thing. They do not destroy brain tissue or at least are not intended to destroy it, but they do have a decidedly damaging effect on the memory. In so far as this concerns the circulating memory, and in so far as this memory is chiefly damaged for the recent period of mental disorder, and is probably scarcely worth preserving anyhow, shock treatment has something definite to recommend it as against lobotomy; but it is not always free from deleterious effects on the permanent memory and the personality. As it stands at present, it is another violent, imperfectly understood, imperfectly controlled method to interrupt a mental vicious circle. This does not prevent its being in many cases the best thing we can do at present.”
― Norbert Wiener, Cybernetics: or the Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine

“I have had the high altitude lobotomy.”
― Steven Magee

“It is clear in some people that COVID-19 is comparable to a lobotomy.”
― Steven Magee

“I cannot make up my mind / because my mind
I cannot find. The wizard, I will tell him / I need a cerebellum. Hope the wizard's got for me / a reverse lobotomy.”
― GLEN NESBITT, We're Off

“You lot need therapy. Or a lobotomy.”
― C.M. Rosens, The Crows