lobotomy

noun

Etymology: From lob(e) + -otomy (a variant of -tomy (suffix denoting a surgical incision)).

1. A surgical operation involving cutting into a lobe of a body organ, specifically (neurosurgery), a procedure, now largely disused, involving severing connections between the prefrontal cortex and the thalamic region of the frontal lobe of the brain to treat certain mental illnesses.

   “Old psychiatric hospitals are even more frightening. They existed at a time in history when shock therapy, brain tissue manipulation, implants, drug experimentation and lobotomies were treatments de jour.”

2. A surgical operation involving cutting into a lobe of a body organ, specifically (neurosurgery), a procedure, now largely disused, involving severing connections between the prefrontal cortex and the thalamic region of the frontal lobe of the brain to treat certain mental illnesses.
3. An act of removing or separating, and often disregarding or forgetting, something.

   “As [Anthony] Magistrale has noted, evil in the fiction of Stephen King "can establish dominion only at the expense of the individual's moral conscience". 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.”