Rosemary Kennedy, the younger sister of John F. Kennedy was born with a mild intellectual disability in 1918.
Although she was happy, personable and vivacious, she could not keep up with her eight high achieving siblings. She was sent to a dozen different schools and traipsed around every doctor and psychologist in New England in the hope of a cure.
She had a brief period of happiness at a Montessori school in London, while her father was Ambassador to the UK, but the war cut this short. When she returned home she went into a decline and her father had her lobotomised at the age of 23, and she had no contact with her family for the next 20 years.
This video explores the shocking views about intellectual disability held by many societies in the 1930s and 40s and the limited treatments available for mental disorders at that time. The details of her lobotomy are presented with a new analysis of some of her behaviour by a neuropsychiatrist with experience of complex mental disorders.
I will also explain why Dr. Walter Freeman, who was involved in Rosemary’s lobotomy and who went on to perform 4000 other surgeries, has been described as the most scorned doctor besides Nazi doctor Josef Mengele.