Update on Psychosurgery

Burchiel, Renae N.

doi:10.1097/01376517-198306000-00008

Cited by 2 publications

(1 citation statement)

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“…61 Oregon and California passed laws against psychosurgery (Alvelo 2009, 57; Grimm 1980). 62 By 1980, the annual number of psychosurgeries dropped from an estimated 414 to less than 300, and few of these operations were for curbing aggression (Burchiel 1983). Psychosurgery became reserved for affective disorders (Diering and Bell 1991, 175).…”

Section: Outcome Of the Psychosurgery Controversymentioning

confidence: 99%

The Surgical Elimination of Violence? Conflicting Attitudes towards Technology and Science during the Psychosurgery Controversy of the 1970s

Casey¹

2015

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In the 1970s a public controversy erupted over the proposed use of brain operations to curtail violent behavior. Civil libertarians, civil rights and community activists, leaders of the anti-psychiatry movement, and some U.S. Congressmen charged psychosurgeons and the National Institute of Mental Health, with furthering a political project: the suppression of dissent. Several government-sponsored investigations into psychosurgery rebutted this charge and led to an official qualified endorsement of the practice while calling attention to the need for more "scientific" understanding and better ethical safeguards. This paper argues that the psychosurgery debate of the 1970s was more than a power struggle between members of the public and the psychiatric establishment. The debate represented a clash between a postmodern skepticism about science and renewed focus on ultimate ends, on the one hand, and a modern faith in standards and procedures, a preoccupation with means, on the other. These diverging commitments made the dispute ultimately irresolvable.

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Section: Outcome Of the Psychosurgery Controversymentioning

confidence: 99%