Lobotomy was Eliminativism

["Doyle Saylor" <djsaylor@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Title: Lobotomy was Eliminativism
Greetings Comrades,
    I have broken up Sam's forwarded e-mail on eliminativism into two sections.
   As the subject line says above this one concerns lobotomies.  At the bottom
of Sam's forwarded e-mail is a little comment on lobotomies,
Sam,
  >Is the cure for criminality some updated version of electroshock?  A
lobotomy, by Churchland's thinking. Electroshock is alive and well in  Canadian
hospitals. They use it for uni and bipolar depression.I used to stand and watch
the nurses wheel people out of the "shock room", completely comatose. In a
seminar I asked the doctor what he thought the side effects of "the shock" might
be. He replied "I do know you can forget whether you are a man or a woman." 
 Wonderful.
 apologies for the jargon,
Sam Pawlett
Doyle
One of the most infamous useages of lobotomies was to quell the left leaning
actress (from the WWII period of the 20th century), Frances Farmer.  According
to the internet site on lobotomies (I can't get the history of lobotomy site to
load so I won't forward that here) Farmer was scheduled to be the star subject
for invited local spectators on the day of her lobotomy, but instead the surgery
was performed before the public on others (with less possible social connection)
at the institution that Farmer was imprisoned in.  The guy who did it,
copied from the history of lobotomy site,
The greatest advocate of psychosurgery was Walter Freeman. Born in Philadelphia
in 1895, the son of a doctor with strong Calvinist beliefs, Freeman had been
appointed Professor of Neurology at George Washington University in the
aftermath of the First World War. America was suffering from a huge increase in
psychiatric disorders. An influx of shell-shocked soldiers and bereaved,
disturbed relatives was swelling the asylum population. In addition, there was
still no cure for tertiary syphilis, which had been discovered to cause up to
half the known cases of dementia praecox, or schizophrenia. The need for
practical measures to counter madness had never been more urgent
Doyle
(continued) used a kind of modified ice pick to perform under local anesthesia
the insertion and twirl that destroyed brain tissue in the lobotomy.  That the
doctor who did these barbaric operations to promote his reputation never had to
face society for his culpability in the multiple deaths his experiments caused
is one of the scandals that is often produced in the U.S.
But my main point was to bring up electroshock therapy a little on the Marxism
list.  In the sixties through vigorous demonstrations in the mental health
communities there was a general diminution of the use of electro shock therapy
in the treatment of many brain issues, but mainly depression.  It has resurfaced
since then as a common practice in the U.S. and apparently in Canada.  Though
generally termed a last resort.
In two circumstances of an anecdotal type I have heard about this resurgence. 
 The
first concerns a friend hospitalized with severe depression who witnessed
someone in that hospital who was administered electro shock.  Afterward that
person felt much better according to my friend.  The second example was more
direct to my life in that my wife had to work with a disabled woman in severe
depression who also got electro shock, and also was in her own testimony feeling
much better.
My question is this, given Sam's comment reproduced here,
Sam,
In a seminar I asked the doctor what he thought the side effects of "the shock"
might be. He
replied "I do know you can forget whether you are a man or a woman." Wonderful.
Doyle
Is this comment adequately informed?  There is certainly a lingering moral
charge from the social movements of the sixties about shock therapy, but is that
judgement realistic.  In my opinion I believe there are serious reasons to think
that given electro shock is causing brain damage that ought to be debated in the
public as to what that means to society.  Furthermore magnetic resonance
techniques have been proposed to replace electro-shock as non-invasive, but what
is involved in that?  
However, it is not entirely clear from the above quote from Sam that
'remembering if one is a man or woman' is a temporary effect or long term in
some people and if such really matters to deny Electro Shock to someone if their
depression makes their life otherwise hellish.  Certainly both the people in the
anecdotes I quoted above did not have such lingering problems of losing their
sense of gender.  But the subsidence of depression through electro-schock
generally ends within six months to one year, and the actual damage that is done
is as far as I know not available to the public or unknown.  So I think nothing
much is revealed by Sam's remark about the serious issues involved.
The question is really whether or not the damage is worth the cost to someone
and they have some social right in the matter.  In the case of Francis Farmer
the damage was a barbaric anti-disabled act by a self promoting egotist doctor
using typical U.S. promotion techniques to advance a technique at the expense of
thousands of human being mangled at his hands.
I want to bring up this sort of issue because the often made charge of
positivism against neuro science by some on LBO obscures the real issues to be
explored.  That obscuring has to do with inserting a concern for philosphical
theory over real world practical considerations in ordinary peoples lives.  If
we descend into moral condemnation of Electro Shock therapy, when in fact some
people do seem as a last resort to benefit from it, then it is a caution to look
at the deeper issues involved and debate what the health care economy does do to
people in a Marxist sense.  
I asked Sam to provide a citation where Churchland advocates using medical
techniques to cure criminality.  That seems to me to be a very good way to
uproot and expose social class making mechanisms spread in science and make a
positivist attitude and theory a useful political target for Marxist to fight
against.  I don't know where Churchland actually advocates such medical
practices in the sense that Charles Murray advocates measuring intelligence to
demonstrate ethnic patterns of intelligence.  It is widespread practice these
days to administer Ritalin for ADD or Attention Deficit Disorder, or to use
anti-depressents to cope with depression.  Does Churchland mean overall, that we
could administer therapy to help with some deviant behavior?  Then what is
deviant behavior in that context?  Is homosexuality deviant behavior, and if not
to Churchland why does deviancy shift so arbitrarily?  What does a Marxist want
to do about such things?  I certainly think that sort of thinking goes beyond
Charles Murray and measuring IQ in racist attitudes in the sciences.  Such
social engineering goes into labeling people psychotic who aren't or are merely
difficult to deal with like Frances Farmer has been charged with and is a
rampant anti-disabled predjudice in the broad society.  It seems to me that
neuro-science gives Marxist new insights to move against such things as
Churchland advocating social control through neuro-science.  But we need to
carefully understand what we are talking about in order to remove the moralistic
attitude that prevails when discussing lobotomies.
Doyle Saylor