BOOK LAUNCH



Psychosurgery. The Birth of a New Scientific Paradigm
Egas Moniz and the Present Day

Zbigniew Kotowicz

With:
Zbigniew Kotowicz
António Barros Veloso
Manuel Correia
Nuno Nabais
Fábrica do Braço de Prata, Lisboa
Sexta-feira, dia 8 de Junho, às 21.30h

This book deals with the theory that mental illness is an illness of the brain. With the advent of psychosurgery the theory entered the experimental stage; now the era of direct intervention in the brain for the purpose of alleviating mental troubles could begin. The introduction of psychosurgery brought about a rearrangement in epistemological rules and a new structure of authority within the psychiatric profession. Egas Moniz’s conviction that mental illness could be treated through experimenting directly on the brain has been extended to include electrical, laser and deep brain stimulation, and today pharmacology is presented as a precisely targeted chemical intervention in the brain. These are backed by the very same argument that Moniz advanced: such experimentation will increase our knowledge of how the brain functions and this, in turn, will lead to more precise, rapid and effective interventions. A programme of psychiatry understood as experimentation with the brain follows rules that are different from the way psychiatry was practised before the advent of psychosurgery. In this sense, it is a new paradigm.

The conviction that mental illness is a sign of a malfunctioning brain leads to a call for merging psychiatry and neurology. The author argues that this is conceptually incoherent, and he does so by demonstrating that the reason psychiatry and neurology are distinct is because, from the medical point of view, their terrains are different and because they pose different sets of methodological, epistemological and philosophical questions. The author also argues that the new vision of a unified neurology and psychiatry is clinically damaging.

Zbigniew Kotowicz

Zbigniew Kotowicz spent some fifteen years as a clinical psychologist and psychotherapist, mostly with R.D.Laing’s Philadelphia Association. Subsequently, in 1993, he took a doctorate in philosophy at the University of Warwick, writing a thesis entitled Gaston Bachelard: Multiplicity, Movement, Well-Being. He was Wellcome Research Fellow in the History of Medicine in the Department of History, Goldsmiths College, University of London between 2002 and 2005 and remained in the College until 2009. He is a member of CFCUL and a recipient of POS-DOC grant for the project Gaston Bachelard.  A Theory of the Subject and Epistemological Thought (Studies of Atomism). He is head of the Centre’s internal project Bachelard: Science and Poetics. 

Mais um livro acerca de Egas Moniz e da Psicocirurgia

Vai sair a público o livro de Zbigniew Kotowicz Psychosurgery. The birth of a New Scientific Paradigm. Egas Moniz and the present day.

O livro traz a chancela da editoras Fim de Século e do Centro de Filosofia das Ciências da Universidade de Lisboa, onde o autor trabalha atualmente.

Trata-se de um trabalho que parte do exame da psicocirurgia, com incursões muito interessantes na biografia de Egas Moniz, para questionar em profundidade os objetivos que a psiquiatria biológica se propõe ao partir do princípio que a "doença mental é uma doença do cérebro".

Voltaremos em breve à discussão de algumas das questões abordadas nesta obra.

Parabéns ao autor.

Conversa Inacabada (1)

The Guardian apresenta a seguinte anotação:

10.37am: There have been some regrettable Nobel awards in the past. Perhaps the most worrying was the award in 1949 to Dr Egas Moniz of Portugal for discovering the therapeutic value of lobotomy. The New England Journal of Medicine hailed the procedure as the birth of a "new psychiatry". The prize led to a rise in lobotomies, which were therapeutically worthless.

Não adianta assobiar para o lado. Por uma razão ou por outra, Egas Moniz, a leucotomia pré-frontal ( por extensão a lobotomia frontal), e o Prémio Nobel de 1949 vêm à conversa ciclicamente. Quanto maior o défice de conhecimento acerca da matéria mais abismados ficaremos de cada vez que o assunto for tratado internacionalmente...

O Cérebro e os Encontros de Lindau

O Scientific American, celebra a 61ª edição dos encontros de Lindau, na Alemanha, publicando na sua edição online parte de um artigo do nobelizado em 1981 David H. Hubel a propósito do cérebro.

Eis um excerto:

(o texto publicado encontra-se aqui)

“At the present stage, with a reasonable start in understanding the structure and working of individual cells, neurobiologists are in the position of a man who knows something about the physics of resistors, condensers and transistors, and who looks inside a television set. He cannot begin to understand how the machine works as a whole until he learns how the elements are wired together and until he has at least some idea of the purpose of the machine, of its subassemblies and of their interactions.”

Egas Moniz. Uma biografia.

João Lobo Antunes, autor da mais recente biografia de Egas Moniz.

Ver entrevista ao Jornal de Notícias onde sustenta que Moniz deveria ter ganho não um mas dois prémios Nobel.  Ver também [aqui] recensão da obra publicada no eä.

Egas Moniz no Youtube (1)

Mais um artigo acerca da lobotomia, na PsichCentral

A PsichCentral editou mais um artigo acerca da história da lobotomia: The surprising history of lobotomy da autoria de Margarita Tartakowsky. Quem estiver interessado em lê-lo, poderá ir por aqui.