The Surgical Elimination of Violence? Conflicting Attitudes towards Technology and Science during the Psychosurgery Controversy of the 1970s

Bibliographic Data

ID4516645
AuthorsBrian P Casey (0000-0002-5625-5171, University of Chicago, corresponding author)
Year2015
Volume28
Issue1
Pages99-129
Publication date2015-03-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueScience in Context (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0269-8897 • E-ISSN: 1474-0664
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0269889714000349
PMID25832572
OpenAlexW2046565069
LanguageEN
Citations received3
References cited81

ArgumentIn the 1970s a public controversy erupted over the proposed use of brain operations to curtail violent behavior. Civil libertarians, civil rights and community activists, leaders of the anti-psychiatry movement, and some U.S. Congressmen charged psychosurgeons and the National Institute of Mental Health, with furthering a political project: the suppression of dissent. Several government-sponsored investigations into psychosurgery rebutted this charge and led to an official qualified endorsement of the practice while calling attention to the need for more "scientific" understanding and better ethical safeguards. This paper argues that the psychosurgery debate of the 1970s was more than a power struggle between members of the public and the psychiatric establishment. The debate represented a clash between a postmodern skepticism about science and renewed focus on ultimate ends, on the one hand, and a modern faith in standards and procedures, a preoccupation with means, on the other. These diverging commitments made the dispute ultimately irresolvable

Bad faith · Dissent · Epistemology · Faith · Political science · Politics · Postmodernism · Psychiatry · Psychosurgery · Skepticism · Sociology · Historical Psychiatry and Medical Practices · History of Medical Practice · Law · Medicine · Neurology and Historical Studies · Philosophy · Psychology