Messing with My Head by Charles Fleming - ISBN: 9780091922139
Paperback
A boy’s life stolen, then reclaimed: a lobotomy’s chilling legacy.

Messing with My Head

The shocking true story of my lobotomy

  • Paperback

    288 pages

  • Release Date

    3 August 2009

Summary

A remarkable story of determination and survival with the power of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.

Howard Dully was 12 years old when he was given a lobotomy. He was 56 years old when he found out why. The four decades in between tell a story of profound love and compassion.

In 1960 Howard’s father and stepmother delivered him into the hands of the man who had invented the ‘ice pick’ lobotomy. Expelled from the mainstream medical community, his once-popular procedure…

Book Details

ISBN-13:9780091922139
ISBN-10:0091922135
Author:Charles Fleming, Howard Dully
Publisher:Ebury Publishing
Imprint:Vermilion
Format:Paperback
Number of Pages:288
Release Date:3 August 2009
Weight:198g
Dimensions:198mm x 126mm x 18mm
What They're Saying

Critics Review

extraordinary

extraordinary * Mail on Sunday *
Dully has written a forceful account of his survival * Observer *
astonishingly free of rancour * The Times *

…one of the saddest stories you’ll ever read

* New York Times *
…his story is both moving and revolting…he faces his past honestly * FT magazine *
truly stunning * Publishers Weekly *

About The Author

Charles Fleming

Howard Dully was born in 1948. At the age of 12, he became one of the youngest victims of the ice pick lobotomy. It would take him 40 years to recover. Abandoned by his family within a year of surgery, Howard was institutionalized in his teens, incarcerated in his twenties, and homeless and alcoholic in his thirties. But in his forties, in love with a woman who was determined to have a life with him, Howard got sober, got married, got a degree and emerged into a kind of normalcy. He is now a bus driver, who lives happily with his wife in California. This is his first book.

Helping Howard tell his story is journalist and writer Charles Fleming, former Newsweek staff writer and Vanity Fair contributor.

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