Howard Dully and Charles Fleming - My Lobotomy, A Memoir

At twelve, Howard Dully was guilty of the same crimes as other boys his age: he was moody and messy, rambunctious with his brothers, contrary just to prove a point and perpetually at odds with his parents. Yet somehow, this normal boy became one of the youngest people on whom Dr. Walter Freeman performed his barbaric transorbital -or ice pick- lobotomy.
Abandoned by is family withing a year of the surgery, Howard spent his teen years in mental institutions, his twenties in jail, and his thirties in a bottle. It wasn't until he was in his forties that Howard began to pull his life to together. But even as he began to live the "normal" life he had been denied, Howard struggled with on e question: Why ?

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In 1998 Howard Dully began the journey into his past to find the answer to what happened to him and would be life stigmatizing and changing forever. The secret kept hidden from him until he held the answer in a file named DULLY, HOWARD in his own hands.

Howard was born a normal child with a loving mother who died at an early age. His father, lacking general affection, remarried and Howard's life got even more complicated. The new mother didn't like him and didn't want him. She began picking on him, spanked him and told lies about him so that the father in the evening would spank him some more. He was singled out, had to eat alone and lived a life in fear of his stepmother.
He was 12 years old when the stepmother contacted Dr. Walter Freeman, the famous but controversial surgeon performing the lobotomy. After several talks with the stepmother (and Howard) the doctor concluded that Howard was a normal boy but performed the lobotomy anyway. The file contradicts that Howard suffered from schizophrenia.

But for his stepmother the gruesome surgery wasn't enough. She still said he was a violent child and she could not live under the same roof with him and his brothers. Howard had to go - and he did. From juvie hall to mental hospitals to an asylum for the insane - all the while being told by doctors that he is a normal boy but that there is no other place for him to go since home wasn't a possibility for him.

As a child living with truly insane people and troubled kids he stood true to himself but developed what was unavoidable: he became delinquent as soon as he was given to a halfway house. He lacked basic awareness for himself, had never learned to take care of himself and soon was given back to the asylum for the insane where he stayed a few years. At one point he couldn't be kept in the asylum any longer as being diagnosed as healthy.
He was released on his own, soon married and became a father, dreaming the dream of having a family but it didn't work out with him being drunk and drugged all the time. Things slowly changed when he met his second wife Barbara and a second child one the way when he decided he had to get his act together and become responsible.

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I began reading the book with totally different expectations which is what happens when you decide to read a book without reading the inside flap of the cover. I only read what stood on the back of the book which mainly focused on the topic and title of the book: The Lobotomy.
So when I learned the book actually has one chapter concentrating on before and after the lobotomy I thought about the purpose of the book. I decided to put my expectations away and go with the story.
Howard's story is one of many and then some more. The whole story of how easily it was decided to perform the dangerous surgery and how easily people around Howard were manipulated by his stepmother is terrible and it is no wonder this boy became a handful. Despite of him more then once writing he doesn't remember that much. No child is able to develop normally in a surrounding like he did. No child is able to develop normally in surroundings he lived in later either. He practically grew up surrounded by really insane people, troubled kids and teenagers and he never experienced love since his birth mother died. One has to ask how he managed to not get into more trouble than he did. Alcohol abuse, drug abuse, bad checks, ... .

I felt outraged by what happened to a child and that there was no protection either by a "father", professionals or the government.

The last chapter in the book was powerful and even answered my questions as of why this book was written. As Dully states himself: Where were the authorities ? With Freeman not being a licensed psychiatrist allowing him to diagnose the boy schizophrenic and perform the surgery, the missing medical standard. The doctors that examined Howard, those who knew he was going to have a lobotomy despite their conclusion he was normal.
He talks about today's doctors who are allowed to diagnose depression or bipolar illness in children, prescribing powerful medications leaving the parents to decide if they want a to consult another doctor for a second opinion.

First and foremost he was a victim of unloving parents and authorities who didn't care to give a child and growing teenager the protection it deserved. He hid behind the lobotomy only recognizing later, that the lobotomy was the explanation to everything that went wrong in his life. That he hid behind it and had to stop being the victim. In the end he is lucky he survived the whole procedure. Many did not or were heavily brain damaged.

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More about Howard Dully's journey:
My Lobotomy - Howard Dully's journey (NPR radio program, upper left under the title)

Paperback: 304 pages
Publisher: Three Rivers Press; Reprint edition (August 26, 2008)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0307381277
ISBN-13: 978-0307381279