REMOVING WORRY

Wairarapa Times-Age, 30 August 1941, Page 6

REMOVING WORRY

WHAT CAN PSYCHO-SURGERY DO?

Worry, neuropsychiatrists agree, is an irrational way of viewing the future, says the “American Mercury.” While every normal human antici-pates-things to come, victims of some mental disorders carry anticipation to harmful and tragic extremes. So morbid is their attitude toward events that may happen and seldom do that often they plunge themselves into psychopathic states of agitated depression, violence or gloomy silence. The prefrontal association areas of the brain are concerned with the future. Thus they are the breeding place of worry. The new operation, called frontal lobotomy by brain surgeons, is a daring attempt to remove the patient’s cares by the actual destruction of their organic origin. As Dr. Adolf Meyer, noted psychiatrist of Johns Hopkins Hospital, puts it: “I should hesitate to promise that we could remove ‘all distractions and worries by operation—that might start an epidemic of too hasty human experimentation. But psycho-surgery in the hands of, the cautious and responsible has its place.”