Season 4 Psychology Episode Guide

by Mishka and Gabrielle Harbowy

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(4x01) Herrenvolk

(4x02) Unruhe

Issue: "Hearing voices"

Issue: Lobotomy

Egas Monez, a Portuguese neuropsychiatrist, can be considered the inventor of the pre-frontal lobotomy. Around 1936, Monez heard about studies in which radical removal of the frontal lobes (performed to remove tumors) did not appear to produce intellectual impairment. A study by Jacobsen, Wolf, and Jackson showed that removal of frontal lobes in violent chimps eliminated their frustrational behavior.

In Monez's first attempts, he infused alcohol into the frontal cortex of violent schizophrenics to kill that area of the brain. Next, he advanced to neurosurgery to create lesions which effectively cut off the frontal cortex from the rest of the brain, isolating it but not removing it. Monez received the Nobel Prize in 1949 for this work.

A side effect of the lobotomy was a striking change in personality. Subjects became irresponsible and childlike. They lost the ability to carry out plans, lost moral reasoning (see Orbitofrontal Cortex), and were unemployable.

Neurosurgical lobotomy was banned in 1955 in the US., but replaced with transorbital lobotomy, the specialty of Freeman and Watts. This procedure is performed with a leukotome -- an icepick-like tool. The pick is introduced into the brain by passing it beneath the upper eyelid and through the orbital bone. Once in the brain, the end is wiggled back and forth to cut the cortex off from the rest of the brain. The obvious surgical benefit of this procedure is that it is considered non-invasive: the skull does not need to be opened. Therefore, a doctor does not need to be a surgeon to perform lobotomies. As a result, though, the procedure gained popularity and was seriously over-performed.

Monez, by the way, died in 1954. He was shot and killed by a patient who'd already had a lobotomy. Go figure.

(4x03) Home

(4x04) Teliko

(4x05) The Field Where I Died

Issue: Dissociative Indentity Disorder

(a.k.a. "multiple personality")

(4x06) Sanguinarium

Issue: Excessive vanity/focus on youth

(4x07) Musings of a Cigarette Smoking Man

(4x08) Paper Hearts

Issue: Pedophilia

(4x09) Tunguska

(4x10) Terma

(4x11) El Mundo Gira

N/A

(4x12) Kaddish

Issue: Bigotry

(4x13) Never Again

Issue: Sexual acting out/risk-taking

(4x14) Leonard Betts

N/A

(4x15) Memento Mori

Issue: Dealing with terminal illness

(4x16) Unrequited

4x17) Tempus Fugit

(4x18) Max

N/A

(4x19) Synchrony

(4x20) Small Potatoes

(4x21) Zero Sum

(4x22) Elegy

(4x23) Demons

(4x24) Gethsemene

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