Myths of the Mind

 ~ Auksarrha

What is the mind?

If you say your mind is powered by your brain, you’re scientific. If you say it is your heart that prowls your mind, you’re romantic. 

But who knows, as the philosopher Chang Tzu once said,

"We might not really know anything because we might all just be butterflies only dreaming that we are humans"

The depth of thinking of the human mind is infinite & immeasurable. Society drawing hard and fast rules to declare a person sane or insane is something I never understood.

A year ago, I happened to read about a time around the 1940s when neurologists around the world claimed to have discovered "just the cure" for schizophrenia, bipolar & other maniac disorders. The radical technique was called Prefrontal Lobotomy.

In a typical Lobotomy, a sharp pick-like instrument was forced through the back of the eye sockets to pierce the thin bone that separates the eye socket and the frontal bone. A small hammer was used to drive the needle into the brain. The doctor simply cuts the connection between the prefrontal cortex and thalamus.

Several operations were performed without general anesthesia & no great surgical expertise was needed. Sometimes the job was done in 10 minutes.

The miracle method converted severely aggressive patients into a more calmer and controllable state. But they became entirely passive, apathetic and disinterested in their own life like the living dead. Some were reduced to the mental capacities of children and others simply died. It was only in the 1960s that this barbaric method was banned.

The real myth is not about whether Lobotomy was able to cure a person or not. The real myth was the frenzy of the mothers & fathers who consented to cut and decircuit a part of their child's brain, just to be presentable before society.

Now tell me, does the real disability lie in the minds of the so-called mentally disabled or within the so-called refined people: US?