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The Frances Farmer lobotomy legend: extraordinary claims, absent evidence, and Scientology; Was Frances Farmer the victim of a forced lobotomy?

Article Excerpt
It is a story widely reported, especially on the Internet, yet rarely challenged. Frances Farmer was the victim of a political conspiracy and subjected to a gruesome medical procedure known as a trans-orbital lobotomy.

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Or was she?

The claim first gained wide exposure in the book Shadowland by William Arnold, a reporter and film critic with the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Many consider it to be the definitive account of Farmer's tumultuous life, more so than the ersatz autobiography Will There Ever Be A Morning? (Although the latter bears Farmer's name, it was likely written by Jean Ratcliffe, her partner and possible lover during the final period of her life when she resided in Indianapolis.)

The radically invasive procedure consisted of severing neural tissue in the frontal cortex of the brain with a pick-like instrument. Arnold states that Farmer underwent the operation (and was subjected to other abuses and indignities) while confined as a patient at the Western State Hospital in Steilacoom, Washington.

Lobotomy was first used as an ongoing clinical technique by Portuguese neurobiologist Antonio Egas Moniz. With the help of colleague Almeida Lima, Moniz found that certain abnormal behaviors induced in chimpanzees could be controlled by isolating portions of the cortex from the rest of the brain. Moniz developed a simple hooked instrument he called a leucotome for the procedure.

Lobotomy was quickly embraced by some in the psychiatric community, as well as mental institute administrators, as a cheap, direct and effective method of controlling certain chronically ill patients. During the 1930s, admissions to psychiatric facilities had soared by nearly 80% annually, and by 1936 an estimated 432,000 people were crowding understaffed and underfunded mental hospitals in the United States.

Practitioners, administrators and the general public were desperate for a solution. The lobotomy procedure seemed to offer hope, and Moniz was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1949 for his pioneering work.

In America, the operation was eagerly embraced by Drs. Walter Freeman (18957-1972) and James Winston Watts (1904-1994). Freeman modified the Moniz procedure, perfecting a technique labeled the "trans-orbital leucotomy." It required little equipment, and could be performed using only local anesthesia. The "leucotome" was inserted above the eye where with the tap of a small hammer it broke through the orbital bone, then moved sideways to sever the neural tissue. An estimated 50,000...

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