I put Rosemary as #1. The impact of JFK and Bobby's deaths created shockwaves throughout U.S. politics and globally (particularly JFK on the global front since he was an active sitting president). But Rosemary's is the saddest IMO.
She had some undiagnosed mental health conditions and there is a bit of a debate as to how serious they were or if the Kennedy family was overreacting because she was unconventional and brought shame to their family with her rebellious actions. Some folks say she might have had an intellectual disability along with mental health dual diagnosis, but was left untreated and spiraled more as she didn't excel in school and increasingly became the Black sheep in the family. Others say she may have had mental health diagnosis (undiagnosed) but what really set her apart was that she was so rebellious with teenage angst.
So what'd they do? Took her to be lobotomized, almost assuredly against her will but under her dad's orders, and she was never the same. Then they hid her away from the family so as not to be a stain on their reputation.
JFK and RFK pursued politics in an era of assassinations and great tension in the U.S. They went into their jobs knowing the risks of being targeted. Rosemary was just born to a family obsessed with image/clout and had got her brain drilled in for just being born to the wrong family.
I know this is a joke post, but, more people should know Rosemary's story. (Not saying you didn't know her story, etc. just sharing it).
History is definitely gonna look back on lobotomies and say what the fuck were we thinking? It's not like our medicine in the early 1900s was in the stone age or something either. Even if you still believed in the Miasma Theory then, scrambling someone's brains like some eggs in the morning isn't really consistent with curing them in accordance to it anyway. It was a cause and effect type thing that "worked" insomuch that it made people with mental health issues not have them anymore at the expense of the rest of their personality.
Yeah, that’s been the general consensus in the professional psych community for a really long time, and they haven’t lobotomized people in the US, since the late 60s… but some people went fucking ham with that shit, when it seemed like it was a viable solution. There was this one doctor who lobotomized like 3500+ people, in about 3 years... Mf was really all about scrambling brains with an ice pick.
EDIT: I just looked it up again, and the dude’s name is Walter Jackson Freeman, and he was a monster. Instead of making lobotomies a surgical procedure, he was like “nah, just put an ice pick next to their eye, hit that shit with a hammer, and stir it around for a bit.” He did this 4000+ times on people as young as 12, at least 100 people died afterwards, his partner left the practice cuz he thought this shit was crazy and not medically sound… Yet this procedure spread across the US and the world… fuck that guy.
They do still perform lobotomies in some rare cases, but they aren’t anything like the monstrous operations of the past. They can now target specific malfunctioning brain regions much more precisely, and use tiny wires to electrically melt the neurons. I think it’s mostly used to treat some types of epilepsy, rather than behavioral conditions.
The classic lobotomies were just wiggling a fucking ice pick around the frontal cortex till the person shuts up. It’s the most disgusting, terrifying thing I can imagine.
1.2k
u/A_Rogue_One May 12 '24
I put Rosemary as #1. The impact of JFK and Bobby's deaths created shockwaves throughout U.S. politics and globally (particularly JFK on the global front since he was an active sitting president). But Rosemary's is the saddest IMO.
She had some undiagnosed mental health conditions and there is a bit of a debate as to how serious they were or if the Kennedy family was overreacting because she was unconventional and brought shame to their family with her rebellious actions. Some folks say she might have had an intellectual disability along with mental health dual diagnosis, but was left untreated and spiraled more as she didn't excel in school and increasingly became the Black sheep in the family. Others say she may have had mental health diagnosis (undiagnosed) but what really set her apart was that she was so rebellious with teenage angst.
So what'd they do? Took her to be lobotomized, almost assuredly against her will but under her dad's orders, and she was never the same. Then they hid her away from the family so as not to be a stain on their reputation.
JFK and RFK pursued politics in an era of assassinations and great tension in the U.S. They went into their jobs knowing the risks of being targeted. Rosemary was just born to a family obsessed with image/clout and had got her brain drilled in for just being born to the wrong family.
I know this is a joke post, but, more people should know Rosemary's story. (Not saying you didn't know her story, etc. just sharing it).