Saturday, March 5, 2011

Book Reading #34: Opening Skinner's Box

Chapter 10: Chipped
This Century's Most Radical Mind Cures

Opening Skinner's Box
Lauren Slater

Summary: In this chapter, Slater relates the history of psycho-surgery and in specific lobotomies. She relates the life and work of Anonio Egas Moniz, the father of lobotomy. His experiments and his contributions to this field. Slater discusses some of the experimental cases, and later cases when psycho-surgery was already recognized as a procedure. She discusses the positive and negative effects that such a procedure can have in people's lives, but noting that many of this people rather face the negative effects than continue living with depression, anxiety and the related issues.

Discussion: This is the first time I read about psycho-surgery. I think that if I was in the position many of those patients were in, I would risk it and get the surgery. After reading this chapter, and how many prefer medication instead of surgery, I noticed so many ads in TV promoting medication for anxiety, depression, and the related.

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