Meaning of Lobotomy | Babel Free

Definitions

1. A surgical operation on the frontal lobe of the brain intent on treating certain mental illnesses.
   countable, uncountable
2. The severing of the prefrontal cortex from the thalamic region of the brain.
   countable, uncountable
3. The severing of the sympathetic nerve trunk.
   countable, uncountable
4. Separation, removal or deprivation.
   countable, figuratively, uncountable

Equivalents

Examples

“They existed at a time in history when shock therapy, brain tissue manipulation, implants, drug experimentation and lobotomies were treatments de jour.”

“Yet this conscience is a deep part of the soul; to silence it, characters must perform a kind of moral lobotomy, excising the best parts of themselves, until what is left becomes less than human.”

“Organisations which set out to treat all individuals as the same, or are ‘colour-blind’ in their philosophy, could be said to impose a form of cultural lobotomy on their clients, in denying the additional skills, knowledge and experience that they have as members of a minority culture.”

“Put another way, how can we avoid an ethical lobotomy in establishing an organizational perspective?”

“In the end, as Levinson feared, the price of Charlie being accepted into normative school society is a kind of social lobotomy: he is tamed, so he is not really Charlie anymore.”

“From Tadros’s perspective — the perspective of classical utilitarianism — there is nothing objectionable about this moral lobotomy whereby a wrongdoer pops a moral anesthetic pill immediately after committing whatever atrocity one could imagine in order to avoid suffering — provided, that is, that she would “understand” the wrongness of her actions.”

“We might be able to offer some sort of mental rehabilitation for clinicians who suffer from this type of intellectual lobotomy.”

“For the surviving generations, in particular the post-World War II generation and their children, a time of cultural lobotomy began, accompanied by a fundamental sense of shame for the abuse carried out in the name of the nation.”

“The offender’s acceptance of his condemnation presupposes the coherent ensemble of collective consciousness of a specific ethical universe; that is, for an offender to recognize his act as criminal before a judge is to disapprove of the act and to negate his rupture of the public sphere by his private conduct. The North African refuses this ethical lobotomy by denial and retraction of his confession.”

“It is as if civic engagement required a moral-intellectual lobotomy, the better to overcome doubts about the inherent goodness of the community, the moral worth of a given group identity, or the value of specific ideological commitment.”

CEFR level