Lobotomy is a popular medical procedure introduced in curing mentally ill individuals, which requires the removal of the prefrontal lobes of the cortex of the brain, the part of the brain wherein aggressive and violent behavior is triggered. However, in the movie, lobotomy is shown to have disastrous results: McMurphy's violent behavior is indeed abated, but as illustrated in the movie, the lobotomy had turned him into a 'vegetable' neither responding to his ward mates' call for attention nor displaying his usual rowdy, obnoxious, McMurphy self.

This instance in the movie is considered as patterned after the medical model of abnormal psychology, wherein "mental disorders are described as medical diseases with a biological origin" (450). Because this is the prevalent thinking in medical science during the time the movie (and novel) was made, Nurse Ratched decided, in order to "treat" McMurphy, to let him undergo lobotomy. Subsistence to the medical...
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