The Sad Story Of Rosemary Kennedy
Rosemary Kennedy, sister of Ted, Robert and John Fitzgerald Kennedy, was the victim of one of the most terrible psychiatric techniques of her time: the lobotomy.
The history of lobotomy is too recent to be forgotten. For most of the 20th century, it was the technique used to correct illnesses such as schizophrenia, depression and behavior considered to be violent.
One of the biggest followers of this technique was Walter Freeman, a doctor who perfected Egas Moniz’s original technique and performed more than 3,000 lobotomies; sometimes performed up to 25 lobotomies per day. He spent much of his life trying to prove that this technique really did benefit his patients.
But was lobotomy an adequate way to resolve violent behavior and illnesses such as schizophrenia? Cutting the nerve pathways between the frontal lobe and the subcortical nuclei did not impede the patients’ aggressive behavior. Later came antipsychotics and chlorpromazine, which opened up a new therapeutic field. But the lobotomy had already left a trail of anonymous victims; victims who were coming out of the darkness and many of them were not that unknown, as was the case with Rosemary Kennedy.
Rosemary was the third in the great Kennedy family, sister to John Fitzgerald and six other brothers. It was the slowest and least brilliant of all. She had dyslexia and, according to descriptions at the time, a slight mental retardation. All this, added to the tough internal competition in the family, where the brothers were successful in their studies and had social recognition. When he reached adolescence, the problems worsened and challenging behaviors, protests and arguments began.
Her siblings were the favorites of her father, Joe Kennedy, who would not accept a less capable and troubled daughter. But the situation got worse when Rosemary started running away from home, arriving each day with a different boyfriend and not doing well at school. His father could accept that his male children could have the mistresses they wanted, but he feared that Rosemary would become pregnant; a scandal that would tarnish his public image. What to do then?
They contacted Dr. Walter Freeman and his revolutionary technique to correct the girl’s aggressive and inappropriate behavior. With that, Joe Kennedy also hoped to raise his daughter’s IQ. All the brothers and a large part of the family were against this intervention, but no one dared discuss the decisions of the family patriarch.
Rosemary was 23 years old when she was lobotomized in 1941, and the surgery was performed in such a cruel way that one of the nurses who participated in the intervention left work the next day. But what was this intervention for? After that operation, Rosemary Kennedy was at the mental age of a three-year-old.
Rosemary Kennedy became invisible
After Joe Kennedy saw the outcome of the procedure, he made a quick decision: Rosemary would publicly cease to exist. For a time she was told that she worked as a teacher in Wisconsin, later that she had meningitis and was therefore hospitalized. But the reality was much sadder; she has spent her entire life in sanitariums in various parts of the United States. They say your father never regretted that decision. At that time the political career of his children was beginning to emerge and the figure of someone like Rosemary could be harmful.
It was in October 1975 that the truth came to light with the headline “Discovering the Invisible Kennedy”. Rosemary was taken to a church service and she fled without the nurses or her family noticing. A reporter followed her and realized what was happening. At that time she was 57 years old and was confined to the convent of St. Colette (Wisconsin).
A sad story and an example of one of the most incomprehensible psychiatric techniques in history. Rosemary Kennedy died in 2005, not realizing that she was one of the few survivors of this family so full of successes and tragedies.
