The funny thing is that most Scientologists think that lobotomies and shock therapies are regular parts of psychiatric care. They are not, and what's more even a five minute trip to Wikipedia will tell you as much.
Lobotomies were only really popular from the late 1930s to the late 1950s, and virtually disappeared from treatment after doctors began to realize that although they did calm patients down and helped some people, their long-term side effects were highly unpredictable, and that newer medications were much more effective.
Shock therapies have always been last-ditch efforts. They are used when patients don't respond to anything else, from therapy to medication. I know personally of people with major-league depression that didn't respond to anything else. Also, today electroconvulsive therapy is done after putting the patient to sleep, unlike how it was done back in (again) the 1930-1960 period when it saw it's major use. There is no pain involved and patients don't have any recollection of the therapy.
This is a recurring theme among Scientologists - they are stuck in a time warp. Hubbard wrote most of his truly influential stuff in that time period, and since his words are canon to Scientologists, they don't really know how to deal with the world except through a 1950s lens. Everything from information dissemination to dealing with the media to how to organize the workplace....all built on vastly outdated methods Hubbard cribbed from a variety of sources in the 50s.
That's why I think the internet will eventually kill this monster - there is nothing in the doctrine that tells Scientologists how to deal with a world that includes such an information network.
