At a mental-health congress in Vienna last week, before psychiatrists from 41 nations, Professor Nikolai Oserezski laid down the Soviet line: the brain operation known as lobotomy "is an anti-physiological method that violates the principles of humanity."
Russian psychiatrists have long frowned on lobotomy, a drastic operation developed in Portugal and the U.S. but by no means approved by all Western specialists (TIME, June 22). For a generation, Russia's doctors have been conditioned to follow, sheeplike, the late Ivan Petrovich Pavlov, of conditioned-reflex fame. Following his patterns, they believe that if any part of the physical brain is damaged or destroyed, the...