Sympathectomy causes permanent psychiatric changes, including significant reductions in alertness and fear.
The autonomic nervous system plays a crucial role in human emotion. Imagine falling in love without your heart pounding. It just wouldn't be the same at all. We speak of "feeling" our emotions, indeed emotions are often called "feelings". The autonomic nervous system is set up to change many different body systems in response to emotion, and this is what makes a particular emotion feel like it does.

Scientists at the Institute of Neurology, University College London, authored this 2001 paper on the neurological basis for emotion, and stated "Changes in bodily states, particularly those mediated by the autonomic nervous system, are crucial to ongoing emotional experience".

Because the sympathetic nervous system has such a strong role in human emotion, sympathectomy has long been used to treat psychiatic disorders.
The Privatix Clinic, led by Dr. Timo Telaranta, is the world leader in using sympathetic surgery to treat psychiatric patients. This study, entitled "Social Phobia, Aetiology, Course and Treatment with Endoscopic Sympathetic Blockade (ESB)", is authored by Paivi Pohjavaara, M.D., of the Psychiatric Department of the University of Oulu, Finland. The research involved 169 social phobia patients who had been given ESB (sympathectomy by clamping) from 1995-2000. The patients were followed for 5 years and evaluated using Davidson's brief social phobia scale, and the Liebowitz quality of life scale.
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The paper offers this graph showing the change in psychic symptoms due to ESB (endoscopic sympathetic blockade, or sympathectomy clamping method). Fear and alertness are shown to be significantly decreased.
The author admits to experiencing
"collegial resistance aroused by this topic".
In other words, given the horrific history of lobotomy, not too many people are keen on the idea of psychiatric surgery at all any more.

This paper gives tremendous credence to the "anecdotal" complaints voiced by so many ETS patients, beginning with the Swedish group back in the '90's and continuing to this day. Reports abound of mental slowness, or "spacey-ness", or chronic fatigue, or a disconnect from strong emotion following ETS.

These psychiatric changes can be predicted physiologically. Strong emotions trigger various autonomic responses. Damage to the sympathetic chain interrupts some of those signals and prevents them from ever reaching the destination organs and glands.

But it goes the other way too. That is, sympathectomy affects the brain. In a 2002 study called "Fear Conditioning in Humans: The Influence of Awareness and Autonomic Arousal on Functional Neuroanatomy", the authors used MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) to measure changes in brain activity resulting from classic fear conditioning. They did this on normal control subjects, and also on sympathectomy patients.

Results? "Absent peripheral autonomic arousal, in patients with autonomic denervation, was associated with decreased conditioning-related activity in [brain organs] insula and amygdala." In other words, after sympathectomy, the brain no longer responds normally to strong emotions.
For a patient initially housebound by intractable social fear, the psychiatric effects of sympathetctomy might represent an acceptable trade-off against the physical problems. But the vast majority of ETS patients are treated for the cosmetic condition of excessive sweating and have no idea that they are consenting to a surgery which may permanently alter their personality.
Modern Psycho Surgeons Chien Lin, Timo Telaranta
My personal experience has been devastating. I am no longer able to feel strong emotions like fear, excitement, passion and pride. In turn, I believe this is beginning to affect my judgement. For instance, I find myself driving faster and taking greater chances in traffic. Nothing fazes me. Music does not inspire me, roller coasters only make me dizzy. In the words of B.B. King . . .
"the thrill is gone"
-songboy1234
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