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What's Your View?
Walter Freeman with a patient. Lincoln Journal Star
Dr. Walter Freeman was an ambitious neurologist, hungry for fame, who championed what would become one of the most infamous medical procedures -- transorbital lobotomy.
What do you think of Freeman and the surgery he developed? Share your thoughts here, read an interview with the program's producers, or visit the Online Forum for questions and answers with experts.
You have this enormous population of patients smearing their excrement on the walls, tearing off their clothes, sitting befuddled on the floor, day after endless day. You say, "How could people live like this? How could they be forced to live like this?" - Edward Shorter, Medical Historian
Your Views
I felt like he had given me a tremendous gift to give my mother back to me. He gave you hope -- "everything will be better" -- and it was.
Angelene Forester, daughter of a former patient
Fairfax, Virginia
I began by thinking that he must have been a monster, or a criminal, because, after all, look what he did. But I've come to think of Walter Freeman as more of a tragic figure, blind, not so much to the consequences of lobotomy, but to the consequences of his own faults and failings.
Jack El-Hai, biographer
Minneapolis, Minnesota
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