Ethical implications of psychosurgery

Abstract

Several important ethical issues are raised by the practice of psychosurgery; in the present chapter we shall examine these. At the outset, however, it should be appreciated that it is difficult, in the context of psychosurgery, to disengage a discussion of ethics from several recent legal and legislative deliberations. Nevertheless, separation will be attempted, since it should simplify matter of organization. Consequently, Chapter 10 will deal specifically with the legal prescriptions pertaining to psychosurgery. In the present chapter the treatment of the ethical issues will be essentially non-prescriptive. Discussion will centre around the brain’s inviolability, the irreversibility of psychosurgery, the moral implications of psychosurgery’s scientific status and the problems surrounding consent.