Orbitoclast

Abstract: American neurologist and psychiatrist Walter Jackson Freeman II (1895–1972) served as an organizational leader for a number of professional organizations, including the American Medical Association's Section on Nervous and Mental Disease, American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology, and American Association of Neuropathologists. He was even elected as the first president of the American Academy of Neurology, although he did not serve in this capacity. Although for a time he was famous in both professional and public arenas, his professional behavior is now generally considered abhorrent. Freeman is infamous for his development of the frontal lobotomy with neurosurgeon James Watts, and his later independent development and fanatic promulgation of the transorbital ‘ice pick’ lobotomy as a panacea for various forms of mental illness and socially unwelcome behaviors.