ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an account of the nature and development of psychosurgery and a review of its practice which is designed to provide a fair background to the assessment of its claims and of the wider bioethical questions to which it gives rise. Psychosurgery is commonly characterised as a procedure designed to alter disordered mental states and/or behaviour by removing, destroying, or severing apparently healthy brain tissue. Even though psychosurgery may be, and to some extent should be, seen as a product of modern-day developments in psychiatry and neurosurgery, some of its roots lie in ancient medical theory and practice. The widespread modern-day use of psychosurgery is generally considered to date from the work of a Portuguese neurologist, Dr Egas Moniz, in 1935. Orlando J. Andy, after detading the various symptoms to be treated by psychosurgical means goes on to say that ‘these various symptoms or syndromes contribute to a social maladjustment for which society demands correction or appropriate control’.
