News about Frances Farmer

CALLAHAN: We still have a long way to go when it comes to women and mental disorders. From Rosemary Kennedy (forcibly lobotomized) to Frances Farmer to Marilyn Monroe, the twentieth century has a slew of examples of dysfunctional women who were deemed wild and institutionalized against their will. The etymology of 'hysterical' comes from the Greek 'husterikos,' 'of the womb.' We should know better, but the word 'wild' still looks bad on women. Women are hysterical. Men are complicated or have demons, but their personal autonomy is rarely in question. Britney Spears' experience was terrifying. A judge took ten minutes to approve her conservatorship, as Ronan Farrow and Jia Tolentino of The New Yorker reported. Spears spent the next thirteen years struggling to get out of it, and, as we discovered, conservatorships are notoriously difficult to recover.