In 1948, loving another man was considered a mental illness. James Peterson, a 28-year-old young artist, was handed over by his own parents to an asylum under the diagnosis of “sexual perversion”, a term used at the time to condemn homosexuality.
The “treatment” was a transorbital lobotomy, a 15-minute procedure that sought to “cure” his desire, but ended up erasing his soul.
The doctor celebrated the success, but the reality was different. James spent 46 more years institutionalized, turned into an empty body with no trace of the sensitive man he once was. His parents, upon seeing that they had destroyed their son, never returned.
