Medicine: Psychosurgery Returns

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Dr. Theodore Kurze, chief of neurosurgery at Los Angeles County-University of Southern California Medical Center, feels that such operations should be attempted only after more conventional approaches like psychiatry, shock treatment and drugs have failed to help the patient, and then only on patients who are dangerous to others or themselves. He also thinks such operations are justifiable to help patients to bear the pain of incurable diseases like cancer. "It makes the patient suffer less," he says, "but it's very disturbing because some of these procedures change the personality."

There are those who believe that brain surgery has sinister implications. Dr. Peter Breggin, a Washington, D.C., psychiatrist, thinks that any operation that alters the personality partially kills the individual and should therefore be outlawed. He also suggests that doctors are operating on the emotions, indiscriminately calming down prisoners, mental patients and hyperkinetic children to make them easier to handle, and tranquilizing neurotic housewives.

But doctors are fully aware of the potential dangers and abuses of psychosurgery; some reputable neurosurgeons avoid it entirely. Mark and Ervin operate on fewer than 1 % of the patients referred to them for that kind of operation. As a further safeguard, some hospitals have committees to screen applications for any psychosurgery.