Rosemary Kennedy

[Socratoad]

Rosemary Kennedy is dead. For those of you who may be unaware, she was the eldest sister of JFK.

If you want to read about how power corrupts I suggest you read about this beautiful young woman was lobotomized to protect her father's lust for power and fame.

[livius drusus]

Is there any reading you'd recommend particularly, Toad?

[Socratoad]

Dear Liv, I read about this several years back in a couple of books which a friend borrowed and never returned. I shall do some research and see if I can come up with either alternatives sources of information or failing that I may bee able to remember the name of these books if the puter can cough up names I recognize. I do my best, which ain't much these days.

[Socratoad]

Liv, here is a site that will give you a flavour of what the "Rosemary scandal" was all about. I', old enough to know and remember that this young woman was in no way mentally deficient enough to have such a drastic thing done to her. I will try to find more indepth reading.

http://www.curtainup.com/ourfathers.html

[livius drusus]

Thank you kindly, Toad. I just read the CNN obituary (http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/01/07/kennedy.obit.ap/index.html) which goes into some of the horrid detail. It also mentions Rosemary early diaries preserved by the secretary in a book. Perhaps that's what you read before your friend permanently borrowed it.

As she got older, however, her father worried that his daughter's mild condition would lead her into situations that could damage the family's reputation.

"Rosemary was a woman, and there was a dread fear of pregnancy, disease and disgrace," author Laurence Leamer wrote in his book "The Kennedy Women: The Saga of an American Family."

Leamer wrote that Rosemary had taken to sneaking out of the convent where she was staying at the time.

Doctors told Joseph Kennedy that a lobotomy, a medical procedure in which the frontal lobes of a patient's brain are scraped away, would help his daughter and calm her mood swings that the family found difficult to handle at home.

Psychosurgery was in its infancy at the time, and only a few hundred lobotomies had been performed. The procedure was believed to be a way to relieve serious mental disorders.

Leamer wrote that Rosemary was "probably the first person with mental retardation in America to receive a prefrontal lobotomy."

But Rosemary was reduced to an infant-like state, mumbling words and sitting for hours staring at walls, Leamer wrote.

[Socratoad]

Yes Liv, one of the two books was definitely the diaries of Rosemary, the other much larger book was all about the father Joseph P. Kennedy. Sr. which included what had been done to Rosemary, but also his pro-Nazis stance and such things.

It was the reading of entries from the young Rosemary's diaries that made me cry though .... literally. One could see that this young woman/girl was a really good person, mixed up, borderline IQ perhaps but not had had her life snuffed out. For all intents a purposes that is exactly what was done.

Now there is no way a wish to turn this into an anti-Kennedy rant. There are far too many people who have actually made a pretty well paying profession out of doing just that. And of course it was a far different era than the one we now live in. But even then it would have to have been a very hard-hearted father to have allowed such a thing or maybe even pressed for such a thing to happen.

If a Rosemary were to be on the scene today she would at most be sent to a "special " school to perhaps help to learn to channel her restless mind, perhaps put her on a mild medication . I firmly believe from what I have read she would be able to cope much better than so very many today or even for at least the past forty years or so. So Damned sad.

PS: If Rosemary were here today at the age she was when she recieved that damned operation she just might be posting on this board and would appear to be no different then antone here ....... makes ya think, does it not? :(

[livius drusus]

To be fair, though, Toad, there's no indication Joseph Kennedy knew she was going to be infantilized by the lobotomy. It looks to me like the doctors promised a miracle cure for all Rosemary's behavioral "problems" and he snapped it right up.

It's sick that a young woman sneaking out of a convent and partying was considered a "problem" because of the scandal potential, but I can see how they'd be genuinely scared for her too.

It's a horrible tragedy. :(

[Socratoad]

I am trying to be fair Liv, very fair. That was my parents era, and yet the people I have known of that era and education and means of the Kennedy patriarch were even then clewed in enough that they never would have agreed to such a chancy thing. IMO his priorities were elsewhere. It not as he and Rose, his wife were a cracker family. However as I mentionerd earlier it is not my intention to turn this into an anti-Kennedy rant thread. I like to thing of it as more a tribute and farewell to a young woman who died when she was twenty two.

[Dragar]

This is terribly sad to hear. I didn't know any of this at all. :(

[livius drusus]

I am trying to be fair Liv, very fair. That was my parents era, and yet the people I have known of that era and education and means of the Kennedy patriarch were even then clewed in enough that they never would have agreed to such a chancy thing. IMO his priorities were elsewhere.

I agree that he made an extraordinarily selfish choice for really crappy reasons; I just don't think you can say that he did it with knowledge of what would happen. I don't know enough about the period to say either way what was commonly known about lobotomies at the time, but from the reading I've done today, it seems that the procedure was very much an experimental one at the dawn of psychomedicine.

My mother was a psychiatric nurse in the early 60s and she tells of several patients of hers going from dangerously, psychotic violence to even-temper after lobotomies without losing their memories or becoming unable to care for themselves or anything like that. As horrific as this kind of procedure is, it's not supposed to end in the utter decimation of the mind; that's not the plan.

I like to thing of it as more a tribute and farewell to a young woman who died when she was twenty two.

She lost so much of herself, it's true, but she wasn't dead, she wasn't a non-person, she even had something of a life with her family once the wonderful Eunice Shriver (http://www.specialolympics.org/Special+Olympics+Public+Website/English/About_Us/Leaders/Mrs.+Shriver+Bio.htm) took her under her wing. The horror and tragedy of what was done to her isn't the sum total of her life.

I like to think of it more as a somber acknowledgement of a brutal, foolish, craven mistake which caused untold damage to a lovely young lady, but still ultimately led to a great deal of good being done out of her sister's love and respect for her.

[Socratoad]

Yes I did forget to mention Eunice Shriver. A good woman, and although Rosemary herself was to a large part unaware, much good has been done in her name.

RIP dear beautiful Rosemary

I know that there is much worse going on at this very moment, the news of her death awakened old memories.

Ya know the sort of there but for the grace of something or other go I.

Thats all I'm trying to say.

PS: being somewhat of an expert on Joseph P. Kennedy Sr. ., I'm a little biased here. He was a pretty horrid person.

[livius drusus]

I agree. He should have quit when he was ahead; ie, running hooch during Prohibition.