The MIB and the frontal lobotomy

For a few weeks, I have been trying to associate MIB report encounters with frontal lobotomies. Many of the indicators of MIB are shared with patients post-lobotomy: the dark glasses given to patients to hide the dark circles around their eyes, the disorientation and general strange activity, the thought disorder that the lobotomy was supposed to 'cure'... I thought for a while that at least some of the MIB encounters might in fact be encounters with wayward lobotomy patients, forming a basis at least until tulpic phenomena could take care of the rest. After all, the direct association with UFO activity was not a common thing until later.

I haven't come into contact with any convincing evidence either way, but I have run across a few fun facts:

• Gray Barker's well-known published encounter happened in 1953, the year before the approval of chlorpromazine that marked the downturn in popularity of lobotomies


• According to Wikipedia, modern sightings started in 1947. The first trans-orbital lobotomy was in 1946.



• "Post-operative blunting of the personality, apathy, and irresponsibility are the rule rather than the exception. Other side effects include distractibility, childishness, facetiousness, lack of tact or discipline, and post-operative incontinence."^[42]

  
  Now, what does that remind you of?

In terms of popular culture associations, I am certainly not the first to make a link. In the film Repo Man, the character J. Frank Parnell is closer to the typical representation of an MIB than the characters cast as MIBs -- he is a former government employee who defected and got (you guessed it) a lobotomy.