Aspies For Freedom

I read today of the passing of Rosemary Kennedy.  She was the oldest sister of President John F. Kennedy and considered the inspiration for the Special Olympics.  She died Friday Jan. 7th at age 86.  

Here's where things get a bit unclear to me.  Rosemary was said to be "mentally retarded" and was LOBOTOMIZED when she was 23.  Her father, Joseph Kennedy had this done secretely and afterward told the family Rosemary had went to a monastary to live her life for God.  Instead, he put her in an institution to live for the rest of her life. (Supposedly, even her own mother did not know until 20 years after the fact!)

I read this online about Rosemary:

"This is only the first of tragedies this family went through. In 1918 Rosemary Kennedy was born. This girl had serious mental problems, so that her father was forced to make her pass a lobotomy, hoping to give her a life as "normal" as possible.

The lobotomy, on the contrary, took Rosemary all capability to interact with the surrounding environment, condemning her to a sort of autism all her life long. "

Other online bits and pieces say that (before the lobotomy) she had become uncontrolable for her father Joseph and that her unacceptable behavior was the reason he had her frontal lobes scraped out.

Rosemary had moments (again, before the lobotomy) where she would stare at inanimate objects for long periods of time and had outbursts that were seen as possible seizures.

She was 23 when her father took her to have this "procedure" done.

I get the feeling that maybe Rosemary might have been on the Autistic spectrum but cannot say for sure with the little bit of information that I have read about her non-conformist ways.

It's interesting (to me, at least) that her name is on a School for children with varied "Disabilities" and that ABA treatments are commonplace at this school.

Poor Rosemary, we may never truly know what things she could have told us.....Joseph made sure he kept his little girls views silenced.

Here is one website that talks of Rosemary:

[url] http://www.astralis.it/kennedy_e.htm
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Does anyone else have any interesting details about Rosemary Kennedy?
If so, please let me know because the few articles I have read about her has peaked my interest.

Here is something that may be of interest:

Source: http://pediatrics.med.miami.edu/HistoryD...meLine.htm

Rosemary Kennedy

·        1918 born to Joe and Rose Kennedy—sister of John F. Kennedy

·        Diagnosed as mildly handicapped at birth but good at sports. She fit comfortably into social settings, where she was perceived as shy.

·        When she turned  22 years old, her condition began to deteriorate. She began to throw tantrums, had violent spells, became jealous of success of her siblings, and began to wander streets alone at night

·        Rosemary’s father, Joe Kennedy, was opposed to institutionalizing her and in desperation had her lobotomized in 1941. Joe kept the operation secret from her mother for the next 20 years.

·        The lobotomy exacerbated Rosemary’s condition. As a result, her family placed her in an institution for a period of years before sending her to a special boarding school in 1949.

·        The Kennedy family was deeply embarrassed by her condition, hiding it from the public until the 1960s.

·        Pearl Buck’s book about her daughter, Carol, encouraged Rose Kennedy to talk publicly about Rosemary.

Maybe it was the lobotomy itself that could have induced 'autistic' like behaviors in her not so much what was going on before the lobotomy as this timelime would suggest that she had been social even though shy previous to the lobotomy.

Here's another bit of information on Rosemary with a picture of her looking quite aware perhaps even "pretending to be normal":

http://www.ytedk.com/lobotomy.htm

Joe's oldest daughter, Rosemary, was considered shy and mentally limited - symptoms of what many suspect was dyslexia. For years the family had dealt with the problem by sending her away to various special schools and convents. By age twenty-one she had deteriorated greatly, giving way to tantrums, rages and violent behavior. Rosemary was beginning to understand that she would never measure up to her closest siblings, and the resulting frustration led to physical fights and, worse, long absences at night when she would be wandering the streets.

Increasingly, Rosemary was seen as a liability to the family's political ambitions, and in1942, Joe moved to deal with the problem. Without telling anyone, not ever her mother, he arranged for his oldest daughter to have a prefrontal lobotomy at St. Elizabeth's Hospital in Washington, D.C. The experimental operation was believed to work wonders with people who had emotional problems. In Rosemary's case it was a disaster and left her permanently disabled, paralyzed on one side, incontinent and unable to speak coherently. She was never allowed to return home, but instead was spirited away to St. Coletta's School in Wisconsin.

Rosemary's fate and how it was handled was the ultimate Kennedy deception. As late as 1958 the family was maintaining the fiction that Rosemary had become a quasi nun in Wisconsin, content to renounce the glamorous world of her siblings to teach less fortunate children. Today the official family version is that she was born retarded, and that only her mother's herculean efforts had made it possible for her to appear normal.

Maybe she wasn't so much wanting to measure up to her siblings....maybe she didn't approve of their win/win mentality and wanted to go a different path but was not allowed to do such a thing.  Maybe her frustrated tantrums were more of a melt-down from the pressure to be what she was not.  Many folks on the spectrum can be quite social (maybe not social in the way others/parents would like them to act) and quite a few seem shy when actually they're just trying to understand the "game" of social protocol (this was the way I was).

When I was young, this could have been my life they were talking about.  When things got to be a little too much for me at home, you could find me walking/pacing up and down the streets of my neighborhood....this helped to calm me.  Something about this whole thing haunts me.  

It's like, the old man (Joseph) couldn't control Rosemary the way he wanted to do so he had her "controlled"  - what a horrible thing to do to your own child.  I cannot understand this type of ambition.  Thank goodness I cannot fathom such things.  Do they still perform lobotomies?
Such a barbaric measure.....reminds me of the whole ABA control application on children today....someday, this too will be seen as barbaric.

"When she turned 22 years old, her condition began to deteriorate. She began to throw tantrums, had violent spells, became jealous of success of her siblings, and began to wander streets alone at night"

The bad old days, this behaviour in a young girl now might get her some counselling, in those days they basically removed part of her brain.

Sad but true, Amy.  I suppose in 1942 this was the trendy medical treatment de jour.
Another article says:
"In the 1940s, there was an American magazine which was trumpeting a new cure for anti-social behaviour. This now discredited surgical operation was called prefrontal lobotomy or leukotomy, in which the nerves connecting the frontal lobe to the higher centres of the brain were cut. The procedure, invented by a Portuguese surgeon, won him a Nobel Prize. Lots of supposedly anti-social people were 'cured' by this operation.
As it turned out, the operation destroyed the personality and left the victims emotional zombies. One woman said that after the operation her daughter was present physically but her soul was somewhere else.
Troublemakers among the rich and famous were often subjected to the operation. Rosemary Kennedy, sister of JFK, was given a lobotomy on the orders of her dad, Joseph Kennedy. The result was so awful that she was confined to a mental institution for the rest of her life. Frances Farmer, a famously beautiful actress, was thought by her parents to be too unruly.
'She was a radical political activist, communist sympathiser and of a rebellious and aggressive nature. After several squabbles with the authorities, in 1942 she was wrongfully declared 'mentally incompetent' and was committed by her parents to various asylums where all therapies failed to tame her into 'normalcy'.
In 1948, her parents ordered a lobotomy. "She was released in 1953 from the hospital, no longer a threat to society.' -" Renato ME Sabbatini, PhD, The History of Psychosurgery, Brain & Mind magazine, June 1997.

I cannot believe they gave the jerk a Nobel Prize!  Just think of how many of us would have been up for this type of "surgery" if we would have lived in 1942.
Sheeze, they wonder why there were no cases of AS until now.....I think I'm beginning to see why.

I decades past mental institutions and convents were there as places to dispose of compliant female family members who were an embarassment or a problem to others in the family.

If more members the older generation had the courage to tell their stories in full, it would be interesting reading I am sure.

I wish I remembered where it was that I read last night on Rosemary Kennedy but the mild handicap that was suspected that she had was possibly dyslexia.

Yes, Mish, I also read that Rosemary had dyslexia.  Here are a couple of facts I also found out about what Rosemary was like before the lobotomy.  

Her mother said she was slow at crawling, walking and talking.  Rosemary had three known diaries that she wrote in, in which she talked about the parties she attended and such things that young girls write about.  The secretary to Rose Kennedy (the mother) kept them even though Rosemary's mother told her to "throw them in the trash."

Rosemary worried that her father did not love her and in a letter she wrote to her father, even mentioned that she was sorry her father thought that she was "fat" (her own words).   Her family mentioned that she would become anxious about her siblings with their aggressive ambitions (some even saying that she was jealous of her siblings).  

To me, this doesn't sound like the thoughts of someone that is mildly or severly "retarded" - ALSO, have you noticed how many articles use this outdated and very politically incorrect/slanderous word to describe Rosemary?

Lastly, the Doctor that performed the lobotomy - Dr. Walter Freeman, did NOT perform this type of operation on those patients that were said to be retarded/handicapped.  Dr. Freeman only used this barbaric "procedure" on those that were with depression, obsessive compulsive disorders and other neurological challenges (this is what Dr. Freeman's own son has said).

The reason I feel the need to keep dear Rosemary in mind I suppose, is so that in remembering the past, hopefully we will not repeat these horrors against other human beings, in the future.

I can fully understand and appreciate that, that type of treatment even for someone that is 'rebellious' in nature without any other issues is intolerable.

In fact, if her condition was in any way relatedf to autism, a lobotomy would increase the severity of the condition.  it has been suggested that autism might be related to problems co-ordinatign between lobes.  I am not sure which type of lobotomy this is, i am rusty, but at least one type (I think) involves cutting the corpus callosum, the bridge between the hemispheres.

i saw this story in the paper it was so sad.  i mean it was like she was that bad off to being with and they tolltay ruined her.

Lobotomies are still performed but they are much rarer due to the popularity of drugs. Whether or not John F Kennedy actually wrote Profiles in Courage is controversial. You can read my review of it herehttp://bibliofiles.blogspot.com/2004/02/...erald.html.

but this time is done with antipsychotics. Risperdal and Zyprexa cause with time apathia, indifference and takes away the high functioning part of the brain literally it is a lobotomy but with drugs.

I know it was done in my adult autistic son. Who right now he just lies there in bed. Having little control over his emotions, uncapable to do art work or enjoy a video game. Has no more concentration or interest in anything in life. He also was abused and lost his beautiful smile. He can hardly control his arms/ hands or legs. He stammers non stop, gets frustrated and hits his head with the heel of his hand like trying to get to say the word by whacking himself in the head. He wears a helmet.

I really sorry that your son is in such a state, Isabelle.

You might find it hard to believe, but I was once prescribed a neuroleptic drug, when I was pregnant, to treat a persistent cough that gets worse during pregnancy. According to the info I have read, the drug is licenced as a treatment for repetitive behaviours such as coughs or hiccups, but it is not authorised for use during pregnancy. I have never been disagnosed with any autism condition, so that should not have been a factor in the doctor's decision. I could have acquired a permanent neurological disfiguring condition if I had taken the drug in the dosage prescribed.

I looked up info about the drug and then through the prescription in the bin. I knew about the dangers of neuroleptics and other prescription drugs because I had followed the AD/HD controversy for a number of years, and had read some stuff by Peter Breggin. Thank you Dr Breggin. I don't agree with all of his opinions, but he has done a lot to alert people to genuine dangers.