The NPS article on Rosemary Kennedy uses “intellectual disability.” The historical sources use the language of their time. This article has tried to use contemporary terminology where possible while quoting or summarizing historical sources in their own vocabulary when that vocabulary is itself historically significant.
What the vocabulary history reveals is the consistency of the underlying social problem: regardless of what term was used, people with the characteristic being described were subjected to stigma, concealment, institutional abuse, medical experimentation, and the denial of basic rights across the entire period from Rosemary’s birth in 1918 to her death in 2005. The terms changed; the underlying social dynamic changed much more slowly.
Rosemary Kennedy’s life spanned nearly the entire arc of this vocabulary history. She was born into a world that would have called her feebleminded. She was operated on when the medical establishment used “mental retardation” as a working diagnosis. She died in a world that was beginning to use “intellectual disability” and to take seriously the concept of self-determination for people with such disabilities. None of these terminological shifts changed her own experience. But the slow shift in the underlying social reality — from shame and concealment toward at least partial inclusion and legal protection — was real, and her sister’s advocacy had contributed to it.
The Question of What Joe Kennedy Knew About Lobotomy
One of the persistent uncertainties in the historical record around the lobotomy decision concerns exactly what Joe Kennedy was told by Freeman and Watts about the likely outcomes of the procedure.