How important is family reputation?
For ordinary people, it may be really incomprehensible, but for the Kennedy family, the political home of the West, it has reached the point of "hand blade" to their relatives.
In a book called Rosemary: The Hidden Daughter of the Kennedy Family, we had the privilege of seeing Joseph B. Kennedy. P. Kennedy's cruel method: In order to save the family's image, he personally deceived his eldest daughter Rosemary Kennedy to go to the operating table, remove the frontal lobe nerve, and become an idiot.
Yes, this is the real Kennedy family, who, in order to maintain their decent and noble image, completely disregard the life and death and feelings of their own family.
For Rosemary, she was originally fortunate to be born in such a prestigious family, her father was a well-known business magnate in the United States, her brother became the president of the future, and her family was a well-known family in the United States.
And Rosemary herself should be excellent, as the first daughter of the family to be born, she was given great expectations and enthusiasm by her parents before she was born.
Unfortunately, all this turned into tragedy because of the early breakdown of the mother's amniotic fluid: at that time, Rosemary's mother Rose did not think so, she had already given birth to two children before, so she was also an experienced mother.
When she arrived at the hospital, Rose was in no hurry to give birth, and she asked the obstetrician and gynecologist who had delivered the baby for herself, but the problem was that the doctor was not in the hospital at the time.
Rose was so disappointed that she even refused to let the baby that was about to be born into the world prematurely: she refused to let Rosemary be born without force, but instead clamped her legs, leaving the baby stuck in the birth canal and unable to be born.
And so it all happened: Rosemary was too long in the birth canal, her brain nerves were damaged, and she became a child with mental retardation from an early age.
It is said that Joseph gave her an intelligence test, and her IQ was only 70.
This means that Rosemary is different from the average person, reacts more slowly, and behaves differently. But she knows how to please others, knows that being well-behaved and obedient will be liked, and knowing that she is inferior to others, so she will be secretly sad.
For this reason, Joseph and Rose are very nervous, they are worried that the outside world knows that they have a low-IQ daughter in the family, and they are worried that it will affect the family image and make their careers implicated.
So, the entire Kennedy family agreed to keep Rosemary's low IQ secret and send her to a special boarding school.
Obviously, this was no small harm to Rosemary, but she silently accepted the fact that she even wrote to her family:
"I'm willing to do anything to please you (father)."
It can be seen that although Rosemary is not excellent, she has the thinking of normal people, the emotional needs of normal people, and she is eager to be accepted by her family, and even to go to society and carry out normal interpersonal communication.
To this end, Rosemary studied very seriously, both academically and ceremonially.
At one point, her lack of intelligence could be disguised as if she were unknown to outsiders. Even when Joseph became ambassador to Britain, she was received by King George VI and queen with her family.
Everything seemed to be going in a good direction, but then World War II broke out. Joseph's family returned to the United States, and Rosemary had to be sent back to boarding school again.
By this time, Rosemary had become a 21-year-old girl, and because she was treated differently, she became more and more temperamental, and even violent.
The following year, given the reality that Rosemary had grown up, she was taken back home.
At this time, she found that her sister Eunice, who was similar to her age and had relatively good feelings, was completely independent, running around all day for her interests, and was away from home for almost half a year.
And her brother Jack also published his own book "Why Britain Sleeps", which made a name for himself, going around to promote and participate in signing events.
And her? I could only stay at home with my younger siblings.
One of kennedy's governesses, Luela Hennessey, said that everyone was very kind to Rosemary, but she was often forced to be in the same group as her younger siblings, rather than with children of similar age, and her interests were more similar to those of her younger siblings, and the dependence of these younger siblings on her also made her feel safe and responsible.
In the summer of 1941, Joseph discovered a major problem that made him feel dangerous.
It turned out that Rosemary was very proud to tell him: "There was a boy who said that he thought I was the most beautiful person in Kennedy's family." ”
In fact, this is a very normal expression, as far as Rosemary's appearance at that time was really outstanding among the sisters, her facial features were perfect, her smile was well-behaved, her figure was plump, and she was more likely to attract people's attention wherever she went.
However, Joseph was very uneasy, and he suddenly felt that he was becoming unable to control the normal communication of the young and beautiful Rosemary, and had a feeling of imminent sensation about what the family had painstakingly hidden.
Eventually, Joseph took Rosemary to the doctor, who gave the answer that Rosemary's problem was "desire dissatisfaction", that she had physical needs, but was still a child psychologically.
Although this was only the personal opinion of dr. Lemoyne Billis, Joseph was worried about something ugly.
After much deliberation, he decided to operate on his daughter. The reason is simply that he fears that he will have a daughter who is pregnant before marriage, or a daughter who will be infected with a dirty disease, which will hit the family's reputation more than the child's own happiness.
After learning about it, Joseph learned about a method of prefrontal white matter cutting, which he is said to have heard about when he was a British ambassador.
But in fact, this operation was not mature at that time, and the physiological and psychological side effects of the operation itself were extremely great.
Joseph thought he could try it, so he took Rosemary to the hospital without anyone in the house.
Joseph told Rosemary that it would soon be better, and that Daddy was always around. So, in order to please her father, Rosemary underwent surgery.
It is said that Rosemary was tied to the operating table during the operation, and local anesthesia was performed on both sides of the temple, and then two holes were drilled out, so that the resection was performed. Moreover, the more awake the patient is, the better the surgery.
The doctor who operated on Rosemary at the time said:
"Maybe the skull is directly under pressure, so once the hole is opened, the patient's fear will be more obvious, and the sound of this chiseling is not at all inferior to the sound of drilling holes in the teeth."
During the operation, Rosemary was very cooperative, and she sang a song while undergoing the operation, and memorized a Passage of the Bible to let the doctor know about her intelligence.
Unfortunately, when Dr. Watt boldly cut the fourth knife, Rosemary never spoke again.
That is to say, Rosemary's surgery failed, and she became an IQ of only two-year-old children, and she could not even control her own defecation.
At this point, Rosemary was no longer the danger that Joseph feared would affect the family's reputation, and she was sent to a special children's school in Wisconsin, and the Kennedy family never had an eldest daughter, Rosemary.
According to the data, Rosemary did not die until 2005, she was "wiped" away from her memory and intelligence, and she stayed alone in the nursing home, and she would not understand until her death that her life was a tragedy caused by her father's operation for the family's reputation.