Walter Freeman II, an Opinion

Dear visitors and residents of the blagosphere,

Here I document my perhaps tendentious view of such an abhorred man. Also, I attempt to connect a meaning to my recent drawing "Walter Freeman II" and his black butterflies. He is not a lepidopterologist. He was a psychiatrist, but his title is debated. He is infamous for being the "father of lobotomies." People hate him because he sought fame and glory at the expense of others, but surely he is not the only man to do this, many respected people have done such. I will not embark on sharing the whole history and implications of the loathed procedure, but I will attempt to explain the butterflies.

The French phrase "J'ai des papillons noirs," translates to, "I have black butterflies." The black butterflies in this phrase represent troublesome or depressed thoughts. In Dr. Freeman and Dr. Watts's book, "Psychosurgery: Intelligence, Emotion and Social Behavior," an illustration of a skull with black butterflies flying out of a hole in the side was featured on the spine. Freeman designed this symbol to represent lobotomies as an escape route for those black butterflies, those troubled thoughts. He was on a mission to relieve his patients from these troublesome insects of the intellect. Few people realize though, that Freeman has his own collection of black butterflies crowding his mind. This is the sympathy I wished to portray in his portrait drawing.

Walter Freeman II

I attempt not to defend this man, for hundreds of lives were ruined by his leuctomes and orbitoclasts which he so conveniently carried in his suit pocket. No one can be sure of his intent, I can only guess that it was a mixture of a desire for fame and a genuine desire to help cure those who had no other hope. Each butterfly represents one of his many trials; he lost his son, Keen, only 9 years old when on a hiking trip he fell into a river and he and a young sailor who jumped into save him plunged over a waterfall, he lived to see his great discovery crumble as his last lobotomy ended in the death of the patient in 1967, he suffered from cancer, and he was hated by many of his colleagues.

I personally have no particular love or hate for this man, but interest. I hope my drawing and these few words of his person can spark an interest for you as well.

For most of the information, I cite a wonderfully written book which I fervently recommend, "Great and Desperate Cures (The Rise and Decline of Psychosurgery and Other Radical Treatments for Mental Illness," by Elliot S. Valenstein, 1986.

Thank you,

Piper