His lobotomy
A few weeks ago, I learned that a man I admired, Howard Dully, died on February 11, 2025. He was 76 years old and had been one of the youngest patients to receive a lobotomy from Walter Freeman, M.D. — the world’s most active developer and advocate of that controversial surgical treatment for people suffering from psychiatric disorders.
Howard’s lobotomy happened in 1960, when he was twelve. I covered his disturbing case in my book The Lobotomist, a biography of Freeman. After my volume’s publication, I shared a book-event stage with Howard and was finally able to connect a grown man with the child discussed so cavalierly in Freeman’s report on the case.
Meeting Howard demolished all my assumptions about lobotomy survivors. Thoughtful and calm, he seemed unimpaired by his childhood experience. He was fully intact intellectually and emotionally. But as Howard later wrote in his published memoir, the knowledge that he had been lobotomized left him with lifelong feelings of inferiority.
Twenty years ago, Howard told the story of his search for information on his surgery in a landmark audio documentary titled My Lobotomy, produced by Piya Kochhar and Dave Isay. It is one of the most moving works of documentary storytelling I’ve heard. I urge you to listen to it in Howard’s memory.
