psychiatric description of infantilists

[Bear85]

While trawling through the web the other night, I stumbled across this website <http://www.sexuality.org/authors/henkin/ls13.html>
and the article within was reasonably interesting discussing paraphilic infantilism, causes etc... then I came to a section which read thus;

"The clinically significant face of infantilism is what the psychoanalyst Wilhelm Stekel called psychosexual infantilism, which he regarded as a retreat from reality: a regressive psychic move toward a fantasy life whose goal is to become “the eternal infant” (Stekel 1952, p 85), helpless and irresponsible. As he describes their case histories, the psychosexual infantilists Stekel saw lived significantly disordered lives. Though chronological adults, most were severely, narcissistically dependent on what today we would call their co-dependent parents; they felt deeply inferior to other people; they felt depressed and out of control emotionally and were demonstrably out of control behaviorally; and they rarely derived erotic pleasure from their infantile activities, which more often concerned staying unemployed, isolated, and unencumbered in the parental home than with having a consenting adult sex partner feed them from a bottle, change their diapers, and lotion their genitals with arousal and/or orgasm as a likely goal or consequence."

this freaked me out a lot as I very much fit this description. My life is horribly disorganised, and as for a co-dependent relationship with a parent- I have moved back in with my mother twice since the age of 23 (although most recently due to illness, but still none the less dependent on her for a roof over my head, and minor financial assistance). I do have a cross between a superiority complex and an inferiority complex - depending on extrinsic factors. Im bipolar - so I do get depressed a lot, and obviously when manic or mixed, emotionally uncontrolled. I spent from the age of 17-25 without having a real job, and recently in the last 12 months cut my work down to almost nothing, while studying extremely "part" time. I burn almost all the friendships I have after a small amount of time, and generally prefer being quite isolated, and am living in my parental home. the bit about erotic pleasure probably only fits me about 50%.... but this disturbed me greatly that I fit a psychiatric description so closely....
Does anyone else feel this fits them? is this just a coincidence? Am I worried over nothing? Am I trying to make excuses for my behaviour??

 

[BoundCoder]

I feel like there is a huge spectrum of motivations and tendencies under the umbrella of ABDL. The term infantilism does narrow things down to a subset, but I still think that there is no accurate "one true description". For some people it's a fetish they indulge in occasionally as part of an otherwise normal lifestyle, for others it's the center of their being, driving most of their decisions and really the main source of happiness (or unhappiness). Some people treat it more like a hobby within their lifestyle, for some people, it is their lifestyle, and then there's everyone inbetween.

Also important to remember when it comes to this stuff confirmation bias becomes a huge problem, not to mention that phycologists are mostly going to be seeing people who feel infantalism is causing a problem in their lives.

You may fit some of that description, but I feel like that is more coincidence and probably isn't anything to worry about. I certainly don't feel like being into diapers dooms you to the life described.

 

[sbmccue]

Remember that Stekel wrote his book in 1952 ... not in 2012. A lot has changed in 60 years! He was far more constrained by social 'norms' than we are today; his was the time of Leave it to Beaver and the typical nuclear family. Anything that fell outside that neatly-packaged unit was studied for fault; in Stekel's mind, infantilists were victims of a situation they themselves had created. Not knowing you or being very familiar with your situation, I'd guess there's more coincidence here than fault on your part. Stekel wouldn't have viewed it that way, but the early 1950s weren't exactly enlightened times.

Were Stekel alive today, he'd likely see the AB community as heavily populated by folks with low social ascendency who tended not to achieve much and complained about not having much money, not having many friends, etc. Fitting into society was far more important to him (and to most other people in the early 1950s) than personal happiness.

 

[Traemo]

For a more recent take, see http://understanding.infantilism.org/surveys/rjl_doctoral_dissertation.php

 

[Tyger]

"The clinically significant face of infantilism is what the psychoanalyst Wilhelm Stekel called psychosexual infantilism, which he regarded as a retreat from reality: a regressive psychic move toward a fantasy life whose goal is to become “the eternal infant” (Stekel 1952, p 85), helpless and irresponsible.

I'm very much not this way, although I very much want to feel this way when I feel little. Adult life is stressful, and it feels nice to have some time where I can feel like somebody else is around to take care of me, I guess I would say that this description is only true for when an AB is regressing, I don't think that is a good way of evaluating the AB when he/she is being an adult though, their adult life can very much have a different reflection. If we took away the fact of the desire for diapers, bottles, baby toys, and nurturing in general, then helplessness and irresponsibility would not be an irregular trait in many adults, especially when the hippie era was just about to start in 8 years. All the people who were into drugs, probably were feeling like the world was in collapse, while other people who went through the great depression might have not known what to do with life after seeing it go through a collapse. Lastly, both of these mentalities can easily just come because of being introverted, and experiencing the fear of life in an extroverted world. You could say, that helplessness and irresponsibility is not an uncommon trait.

As he describes their case histories, the psychosexual infantilists Stekel saw lived significantly disordered lives.

He probably had very few test cases, as AB's are very few. The internet has really been the only way that we can gather enough adult babies in one place that a psychologist could make a real good test case. On that note, with the rise of the internet, it makes it a lot easier for AB's to find support groups so they can keep their emotions together and try to be orderly people. Without that, it would be really easy to go a bit crazy when you cant find an explanation of why you like diapers, and you cant find anybody to relate to.

Though chronological adults, most were severely, narcissistically dependent on what today we would call their co-dependent parents; they felt deeply inferior to other people; they felt depressed and out of control emotionally and were demonstrably out of control behaviorally;

Again, during his time, it was likely that an AB would have felt alone, and not known what to do with his/her life.

and they rarely derived erotic pleasure from their infantile activities,

Most adult babies don't want erotic pleasure from regression, that is why in general cases, AB's are adult babies, and do so because of comfort reasons, while DL are diaper lovers, and in general cases find sexual stimulation from wearing diapers, but don't want to feel like a child. In general cases, the sexuality sits more on the DL side of the spectrum, not always true, but that would explain this statement, otherwise, I would say this statement is straight out wrong for me, I'm very sexually driven.

which more often concerned staying unemployed, isolated, and unencumbered in the parental home than with having a consenting adult sex partner feed them from a bottle, change their diapers, and lotion their genitals with arousal and/or orgasm as a likely goal or consequence."

Is this supposed to mean that he thinks AB's would rather stay in their parents home than live with a consenting adult sex partner to be fed from a bottle and have a diaper change? Seems very incorrect to me, to hell with living in my parents house, I'll take a female caretaker any day.

this freaked me out a lot as I very much fit this description. My life is horribly disorganised, and as for a co-dependent relationship with a parent- I have moved back in with my mother twice since the age of 23 (although most recently due to illness, but still none the less dependent on her for a roof over my head, and minor financial assistance). I do have a cross between a superiority complex and an inferiority complex - depending on extrinsic factors. Im bipolar - so I do get depressed a lot, and obviously when manic or mixed, emotionally uncontrolled. I spent from the age of 17-25 without having a real job, and recently in the last 12 months cut my work down to almost nothing, while studying extremely "part" time. I burn almost all the friendships I have after a small amount of time, and generally prefer being quite isolated, and am living in my parental home. the bit about erotic pleasure probably only fits me about 50%.... but this disturbed me greatly that I fit a psychiatric description so closely....
Does anyone else feel this fits them? is this just a coincidence? Am I worried over nothing? Am I trying to make excuses for my behaviour??

Who is to say that your life is disorganized because you are an adult baby, or because we have a difficult economy to live in. I mean, you just pointed out that you have hardly any work hours, i'm sure that if your job said, "hey, we need you in full time now," you would probably be extremely happy. I work a job where I get all summer off, and it drives me crazy after about 3 weeks. Just because we don't prefer to spend time in our adult head space, doesn't mean that we don't like to have some adult life stimulus by challenging ourselves to be productive members of society. There are plenty of people who are stuck living in their parents home because of financial crisis, I really doubt that your case is because you like to wear diapers. I would only conclude that you are too stuck in your little head space if you are the type that wont go out and look for a job, but instead, you already have one, but they hardly have any work for you to do. This really ins't something that you have a lot of control over. As for your friendships, the same could be said about a lot of people, especially introverts who are looking for a specific type of friend, usually another introvert, introverts usually have a hard time finding friends, because they want just a few friends that they can be really close to, who also understand when each other needs some space to cool down from too much public exposure.

Overall, I think it would be easy to fit that description as an AB only because there are probably more introverts that are AB then there are extroverts. Also it doesn't seem to be very uncommon that there is some type of economic fall apart lately. I think that this description is the consequence of a larger equation. If there was a greater acceptance and understanding towards AB's and the economy was more stable, then I would wager that you could likely find a few very successful people who identified as AB.

 

[dogboy]

Wilhelm Stekel actually lived, according to Wikipedia, from 1866 - 1940 and was a follower of Freud. It sounds like typical Freud, psycho-sexual nonsense. From what I've read and observed, Freud and his followers looked at a small group of people with extreme problems and formed theories based on that very small set of subjects. I wouldn't take Stekel's observations very seriously. As has been previously stated, most of us live productive, normal lives.

I'm retired and yet work a good paying, professional part time job. I'm a good husband, father and grandfather. Wearing diapers and regressing gives me both a sense of peace and sometimes, a sexual turn on, but they don't rule my life. I have no desire to live in a constant state of infancy, being mothered, changed and having my genitals wiped with lotion. How ridiculous!

 

[Illinoise]

I do live with my parents, but I'm not sure about the "unemployed" part. Between my paying job, and volunteer gigs, I literally haven't had a day off in over three months.

I also don't think that I'm "depressed", nor do I consider myself "out of control behaviorally."

 

[ArchieRoni]

Worth remembering is that in the late 19th and early 20th century, the stigma of mental illness was so great that the only people that would see a doctor about such things had such severe illnesses that they were effectively non-functional in their daily lives. So the writing that we see typically theorizes about very extreme dysfunction.

The question to ask today for overall health is whether a quirk, fetish, or other unusual activity is interfering with one's life. For example, you mention your bi-polar disorder and if that's affecting your life such that you're not able, day to day, to get regular tasks and activities done or socialize normally, then that might be worth seeing a doctor about. On the other hand, if you're managing these problems and doing an okay job getting things done and moving forward with your life, then you don't have a problem.

Regarding living at home, specifically, it's not necessarily a big deal. Lots of people live with their parents these days. It might be a problem if you feel like you're unable to support yourself and your current mental problems are interfering with your ability to gain the ability to support yourself (basically, same as above paragraph). But if you're just doing it now to save money while you work towards a better position, it's fine.

 

[CrazySmoker]

Just all definition can´t cover all aspects. Shrinks are working with a lot of statistics, so there´s "% of error."

As to me... I like to play baby, it´s sexual charge, but not only that. I feel free to realize sexual relations in "normal way" (and I do it) - wtf is normal ? Live alone. I can cover all my needs, sometimes with some problems, but I´ve to make my cash.

Is true that can be description very general of a lot of people inside this subworld, but at all cases aren´t all of them.

 

[Sanch]

I'd echo what ArchieRoni said, and add that ABDL covers an enormous spectrum of people - We range from people with high incomes to no income, from individuals with 5 kids who've been married for decades to people who've always been single, from people who left home at 16 to those who are still there in middle-age.

Essentially, I don't think any definition about the circumstances of people who gravitate towards ABDL is going to be accurate, nor is any attempt to categorise us as a certain type of person. We're far too varied for that.

 

[KimbaFoxNatsume]

Yeah... I see the similarities between myself and the description. But, that being said, it's obviously not true for every ab.