Medico-Legal Problems in Psychosurgery

Silbermann, Maximilian; Ransohoff, Joseph

doi:10.1176/ajp.110.11.801

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2014

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Cited by 5 publications

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“…Medico‐legal dangers are discussed in papers by Silbermann and Ranoshoff (26) and by Moyers (27). A comprehensive study of leukotomy covering complications, indications and associated psychiatric problems is presented in Sargent and Slater's book concerning the physical methods used in psychiatry (28).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Studies in Basic Gerontologic Psychiatric Research. Psychosurgery and Geriatric Psychiatry

Hader¹

1965

J American Geriatrics Society

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Studies in Basic Gerontologic Psychiatric Research. Psychosurgery and Geriatric Psychiatry

Hader¹

1965

J American Geriatrics Society

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Psychochirurgie

Heimann¹

1963

Grundlagen Und Methoden Der Klinischen Psychiatrie

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On deciding to have a lobotomy: either lobotomies were justified or decisions under risk should not always seek to maximise expected utility

Cooper

2014

Med Health Care and Philos

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In the 1940s and 1950s thousands of lobotomies were performed on people with mental disorders. These operations were known to be dangerous, but thought to offer great hope. Nowadays, the lobotomies of the 1940s and 1950s are widely condemned. The consensus is that the practitioners who employed them were, at best, misguided enthusiasts, or, at worst, evil. In this paper I employ standard decision theory to understand and assess shifts in the evaluation of lobotomy. Textbooks of medical decision making generally recommend that decisions under risk are made so as to maximise expected utility (MEU) I show that using this procedure suggests that the 1940s and 1950s practice of psychosurgery was justifiable. In making sense of this finding we have a choice: Either we can accept that psychosurgery was justified, in which case condemnation of the lobotomists is misplaced. Or, we can conclude that the use of formal decision procedures, such as MEU, is problematic.

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Medico-Legal Problems in Psychosurgery

Cited by 5 publications

References 3 publications

Studies in Basic Gerontologic Psychiatric Research. Psychosurgery and Geriatric Psychiatry

Studies in Basic Gerontologic Psychiatric Research. Psychosurgery and Geriatric Psychiatry

Psychochirurgie

On deciding to have a lobotomy: either lobotomies were justified or decisions under risk should not always seek to maximise expected utility

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