“While Johnson’s rhetorical analysis focuses on lobotomies, she also shows how popular representations of medicine draw as much on circulating cultural ideas as on the specifics of operations and experiments. Rejecting the outdated ‘influence’ model in which information flows just from science to the public, Johnson demonstrates how lay responses to lobotomies influenced the ways that neurologists presented their procedures…A highly original, conscientiously researched, engagingly written study.” —Laura Otis, Emory University “Johnson expertly intertwines history and detailed biographical information from and about medical professionals and their patients, and contextualizes it all with media and cultural artifacts to synthesize a project that is both entertaining and understandable by readers with little to no prior knowledge of psychiatry, psychosurgery, or public perceptions of the two.” – Somatosphere “What is a lobotomy? … [Johnson] works from the basic assumption that lobotomy has no single definition. It has no substance, no essence. Historically speaking, it consists only in an incredibly long list of associations with other things such as sciences, brains, and communism… The principle may be simple, but it is also revolutionary… Johnson’s ontology holds the potential to remap the field of rhetoric.” – Quarterly Journal of Speech "Johnson expertly intertwines history and detailed biographical information from and about medical professionals and their patients, and contextualizes it all with media and cultural artifacts to synthesize a project that is both entertaining and understandable by readers with little to no prior knowledge of psychiatry, psychosurgery, or public perceptions of the two."
-Somatosphere
Somatosphere
"An excellent study that draws on many sources - medical, historical, cultural - to tell an original story..."
T.P. Gariepy, Choice Reviews Online
T.P. Gariepy
Choice Reviews Online
"Eminently readable, smart, and above all, original."
Stephen T. Casper, Literature & History
Stephen T. Casper
Literature & History
"American Lobotomy also reveals a surprising amount about the value of attending to individual embodied experiences and emotional responses. Johnson not only consistently explicates how bodies and emotions are never detached from scientific discourses, but more so, she presents a strong case that attention to conflicting and various emotions can and should inform scholars interested in medical rhetorics and medical histories."
Configurations
David R. Gruber
Configurations