When my grandmother died, I found some papers from the 1940s from a psychiatric institution, along with a few letters. I asked my uncle about it. He told me that my grandmother's sister had been hospitalized, and then died from a lobotomy. My grandmother felt guilty. She was the one who authorized the procedure, so she never talked about it. He added, in my grandmother's defense, that my great aunt had been "out of control," so there was "nothing else to do." I'm not sure what constituted "out of control." The only example I was given was that she would take off her clothes and run outside, which of course mortified my family. This information haunted me for a few reasons. At the time I had several family members, still alive, who struggled with serious mental illness. Yet this was the first documented evidence I discovered about it. It was all around us but never discussed. We no longer lived in a time where lobotomies were considered an ...
Life After Narcissistic and Emotional Abuse