The Fishwhacker Swindle?

May I introduce Peter Halvorson, the senior director of ITAG. No, that’s not a new Apple product, but the International Trepanation Advocacy Group. For those who don’t know, trepanation – or trepanning, not to be confused with the charming Cornish town of the same name - is the drilling of a hole in one’s head in order to increase one’s sense of well-being. It was pioneered by one Bart Huges, a Dutch user of mind-bending drugs who gave himself the title ‘doctor’ despite having failed his final exams at medical school and therefore never graduating (as he reveals in this hilarious interview). In his seminal 1962 work on trepanning, The Mechanism of Brain Blood Volume, Huges proposed his concept of Homo sapiens correctus, according to which adults lose the imaginativeness and joie de vivre they experience as small children because the fontanelle, the soft spot on an infant’s head where the bones haven’t fused, closes off and thereby restricts the pulsation of blood in the head. This leads to all manner of problems including depression, neurosis and for all I know the wearing of fake Burberry caps and hoodies. The solution is, obviously, to open a new hole in the skull to allow the blood to pulse and flow more freely, leading to relaxation, relief from mental illness and enhanced creativity. According to this thought-provoking theory, Homo sapiens correctus represents a higher stage in our evolutionary development.

Leaving aside the minor flaws in the hypothesis – one being that if holes in our head were associated with a more natural human state, then natural selection would have provided us with them as adults, perhaps with a hinged flap to keep out infection – there are obvious practical hurdles to overcome in achieving the blissed-out state of cranium violatum. Like, for example, making the hole in the first place. I’ve watched neurosurgery being performed myself and it requires a fair amount of anatomical knowledge, not to mention a steady hand, to penetrate the skull without damaging the brain or its covering layers of dura. Unless you really want the blood to flow spectacularly – torrentially, in fact – it’s probably not such a good idea to rely on a Black & Decker cordless, an eight-pack of Stella and your mate Dougie. You could always try to get a neurosurgeon to do it, I suppose, but for some absurd PC reason doctors in most countries are forbidden by their professional bodies and by law to carry out this procedure, and going to a black market surgeon is risky because there’s usually a very good reason why that doctor is working on the black market in the first place. Fortunately, the ITAG website offers useful tips on how to go about having your skull broken into in a controlled way, and there are some terrific testimonials there, accompanied by pictures of some rather odd-looking people.

I do worry sometimes that I might trepan myself one day. I watched the video nasty Driller Killer once, and I drove a screw through my Action Man’s head when I was a boy. Mind you, I also dismembered him (accidentally) by heaving a pile of rocks onto him to simulate an avalanche, and I haven’t buried myself alive yet, so perhaps I’m reading too much into early behaviour patterns.

Just in case you’re thinking of making the following ‘joke’ in the comments, I’ll save you the bother: I need a hole in my head like I need a hole in the head.