This edition of this monograph on psychosurgery is greatly enlarged over the first edition, which appeared in 1942. The authors' experience with the treatment of mental illnesses by surgery on the frontal lobes has been greatly extended. Only 80 patients had been operated on at the time of their first edition. They now have performed frontal lobotomy on 617 patients and transorbital lobotomy on 262 patients.
In the interval between the publication of the two editions of this monograph, various new techniques of psychosurgery have been devised, and operations on the frontal lobes have been used in the treatment of patients with intractable pain. The new techniques of removal of selected areas of the frontal cortex (topectomy), undercutting of the frontal cortex, thalamotomy, and open frontal lobotomy are discussed briefly. The authors have continued to use their original technique of frontal lobotomy. One of the authors, Dr. Freeman, has performed