leucotomy: meaning, definition, pronunciation and examples

Essentially, yes. 'Leucotomy' (from Greek 'leukos', white, and 'tomē', cutting) is the original, more technical term for the surgical cutting of white brain matter. 'Prefrontal lobotomy' is a more specific and later term for the same class of procedures. In common parlance, 'lobotomy' is far more widely recognised.

No. Prefrontal leucotomy/lobotomy was completely abandoned by the late 1970s due to the advent of effective psychotropic medications and widespread recognition of its devastating and unethical outcomes. Modern psychosurgery, such as very precise cingulotomy for severe OCD, is radically different in technique, ethics, and application.

The procedure often turned violently disturbed patients into passive, childlike, cognitively impaired individuals, robbing them of personality, initiative, and emotional depth. It was frequently performed without proper consent on vulnerable populations. It symbolises medical hubris and a mechanistic, dehumanising view of mental illness.

The Portuguese neurologist António Egas Moniz developed the prefrontal leucotomy in 1935, for which he controversially won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1949. The procedure was later popularised and simplified (notably with the 'ice-pick' transorbital method) by American neurologist Walter Freeman.

A historical neurosurgical procedure involving the cutting of white nerve fibers in the brain to treat severe mental disorders.

Leucotomy is usually technical, historical, medical, academic, pejorative. in register.

Leucotomy: in British English it is pronounced /luːˈkɒtəmi/, and in American English it is pronounced /luːˈkɑːtəmi/. Tap the audio buttons above to hear it.