1895-1972
Chief Promoter and Practitioner of Transorbital, or Ice-Pick, Lobotomy in the United States

Ice-pick Wizard.

Dr. Walter Jackson Freeman was a tireless missionary preaching the benefits of the lobotomy to mental-health practitioners during the 1950s. He promoted the transorbital lobotomy, which he had popularized, as such an uncomplicated procedure that psychiatrists not schooled in surgery could perform it with minimal training. Also known as the ice-pick lobotomy, because Freeman performed his earliest surgeries with that common tool before more-precise surgical instruments were designed for his use, transorbital lobotomies were performed by inserting a sharp probe into the frontal lobe of the brain through the eye socket and wiggling the probe vigorously to dislodge portions of the brain thought to cause emotional disruptions. Throughout the 1950s Freeman traveled around the country demonstrating and teaching this procedure, sometimes performing as many as twenty-five lobotomies in a...