This is the distilled summary of my psychological self-diagnosis. There is a 300-page book you can read (
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08NWV79R7/) which unlocked it for me. After many decades of searching, I have finally found an explanation which stands up.
The main discovery is that I have two personalities. One is a “
fraction”.
Primary is the dominant “Adult” who is always there, always in control. The other persona is the “Baby”. The “Baby” is extraordinarily powerful. It shares consciousness but does not have executive power. It gets its way by providing comfort and pleasure to the “Adult”, but the “Adult” suppresses it mercilessly. Over time, an uneasy truce has developed between the two personalities – “Adult” allows “Baby” some of its demands in return for “Baby” feeding soothing and protective feelings to “Adult” whenever it is indulged. It is well aware that “Adult” depends on it to function properly. One example of this is that “Baby” has managed to convince “Adult” to permit the 24x7 wearing of nappies in exchange for peace and quiet (and endorphins).
“Baby” is not a fully functional personality. It is what is known as a “shard”, incapable of surviving on its own. In reality, both personalities are interdependent and would die without the other, but “Adult” has a better chance overall.
About one in a thousand people have Dissociation-driven multiples, and mine is the mildest form. I think I understand how my “Baby” shard came about.
I had a perfectly symbiotic relationship with my mother for the first year of my life. As the first child, I’m certain she outdid herself in anticipating and fulfilling my every need: that was in her nature. The literature about Attachment Theory says:
“For not only young children but human beings of all ages are found to be at their happiest and able to deploy their talents to best advantage when they are confident that, standing behind them, there are one or more trusted persons who will come to their aid should difficulties arise. The trusted person provides the secure base from which his (or her) companion can operate.” [Bowlby, Attachment and Loss Volume 2: Separation p. 359] and further: “
The period during which attachment behaviour is most readily activated, namely about six months to five years, is also the most sensitive in regard to the development of expectations of the availability of attachment figures…” [ibid]
Just over a year in, I had the rug pulled out from underneath me when my mother produced my younger sister. Suddenly I was no longer the centre of attention but, even worse, I came to this realisation only after what I imagine was an acute and brutal change to my environment/care when I was shunted into the custodianship of my paternal grandmother for the couple of days my mother was in hospital.
A broken bond is called an
Insecure Attachment, and I lived it first-hand. There are several paths out of this dilemma for an infant. No matter which one is chosen, the effect is long-lasting: a reverse, negative impact on a child’s self-esteem and trust. Childhood attachment bonds are created or broken through the attunement of caregivers with their children, or the lack of it. A secure attachment is generated by the synchronisation of the caregiver’s attentiveness to her child and its needs. Attunement and the creation of a secure attachment begins and is at its most intimate from the first days of life. It continues in various forms through infancy, childhood and early adolescence. When the attuned caregiver acts on her accurate discernment of the infant’s needs, those needs are validated and the infant feels comforted and safe. Infants express outrage when their needs are not met (or inaccurately discerned and given the incorrect response). When a caregiver is persistently not attuned to her child, something goes powerfully awry.
Attunement is two-way. An infant is exquisitely attuned to his caregiver’s emotional state. It is a fundamental survival instinct for the infant to sustain the bond on which his very life depends. When the caregiver’s emotional state or availability changes, the infant adapts so as to repair the deficit and thus regain her availability. In other words, the infant compromises to get back into the caregiver’s good graces. A short, sharp shock broke the trust I had in my caregiver, possibly exacerbated by the “old-school”, harsher treatment I expect I must have received at the hands of my grandmother over a few days. If it did happen, it was a brutal trauma.
The strategy I used to surmount it was to spin off a shard personality (“Baby”), bury all my betrayal within it, and then suppress. I continued presenting myself as compliant and grateful although I was aware that things had permanently changed.
I desperately wanted to keep the best attachment possible with my mother, but I was not able to change her. She now had two infants to look after, and I would be correct in asserting that the younger one was now occupying most of her time. It is family lore that my sister was an extremely difficult and demanding baby.
So, the only thing I had the power to change was myself. I suppressed my unmet needs and negative emotions inside “Baby” because I unconsciously perceived that they might invite emotional retaliation and threaten my relationship with my caregiver. I was only too glad to have her back, but disappointed at her reduced level of care. I hid these emotions behind a bland mask of acceptance and locked them away inside “Baby”.
This leads to the theory of Transitional Objects.
The psychological mechanism by which “Baby” derived emotional comfort after I found I had lost a significant portion of prior support was obviously my nappy. Transitional Objects are things like stuffed toys, security blankets and the like. My first TO helped me tolerate the temporary absences of my caregiver. This was not a simple case of a familiar but inanimate object: to me, the nappy was alive and represented and embodied my mother: the object
was her! It was reinforced by her actions when changing me being no different than before – I experienced it as a path back to the good old days when I had had her undivided attention and the pleasure of being fussed over by her. Being put into a clean, dry nappy became the centre of my existence. I have no doubt the fixation with my waterproof pants came about because I compulsively touched them when she wasn’t there. They were her stand-in. Contact with my baby pants pacified “Baby” and gave the nascent “Adult” a way to assert control in the interests of self-preservation.
The transitional object changed when I got older. I was toilet trained at an appropriate age and never went back into nappies. There is a photo in the album of me with my literal security blanket. I still have it: my mother gave it to me with a lot of my other baby stuff, decades ago. I was quite elaborate with my security blanket ritual: I would suck on a small part of it to make it wet, then bite the wet patch into a point which I used to tickle my cheek as I went to sleep. The longer the process, the more it dried out and the more pronounced the tickle. I remember planning the steps out to get maximum advantage of the sensation versus time to achieve. This phase lasted until I was about 6. I know I stopped it before I went into Class 1 as a conscious decision: I was a “big boy” now!
“Baby” remained a deeply-buried part of my psyche, but it is only since I read this book that I have understood this. For example, I have fragmented memories of seeing my younger sisters dressed in their nappies and plastic pants and being jealous. My mother kept a box of old towelling nappies and baby pants in the linen cupboard just outside my bedroom and I do recall that I often took a pair of waterproof pants to bed and put them under my pillow. I used them in conjunction with the security blanket: one hand would be tickling my cheek while the other was caressing the baby pants hidden under my pillow, so I guess the baby underwear Transitional Object never really went away. This is classic Transitional Object theory:
“Biological children first create Transitional Objects when they are between 4 and 12 months old, that is before they have language or abstract thought. Infants first create TOs when they realise that their primary caregiver is separate from themselves. In response to the anxiety created by that realisation, they endow an inanimate object, typically something with a soft texture which can be cuddled, with special properties.” [Winnicott, Transitional Objects and Transitional Phenomena, 1953]
For a DL (which I am), wearing nappies is a highly effective means of preventing or ameliorating anxiety: it is 100% self-soothing. Waterproofs are Transitional Objects. Unconsciously, the baby pants symbolically recreate the presence of the childhood caregiver and offer a fictionalised re-run of the traumatic scenario which has a better outcome.
I acted on my urges in my first year of school. I wore a glorious pair of textured, white PVC baby pants over my tighty-whities and was just bursting to show them off to somebody. I remember standing in line next to my best buddy Graeme after tea-break and pulling the waistband of my grey polyester shorts away from my belly to demonstrate what I was wearing. I figured he'd be just as excited about my bravery in wearing such an awesome non-standard undergarment, but I experienced my first (and last) outright rejection there: something I will never forget. I saw immediately that he wasn't going to understand - he laughed and dismissed them as "farty farts." It was the fastest climb-down and subject change I ever made, and I remember hoping he'd forget I'd ever mentioned it. Fortunately, six-year-old Graeme had the attention span of a goldfish: it was as if it had never happened, and he never brought it up again despite us remaining close pals for years. After that, I became more circumspect, concluding (falsely) I was on my own with this interest. I already had “Baby” well and truly suppressed, and at that time was not even aware of its existence. However, “Baby” launched its power-grab around puberty.
I was 14, and it happened in a roundabout way. From the age of 5, all I knew was that whenever I put a nappy on, I would immediately spring a complete boner – every time. I didn't know what it meant, and I was often frustrated by its propensity to get in the way of pinning my towelling diaper which was a precursor to the main act: those lovely white, plastic waterproofs. “Baby” was compelling me to wear this clothing, but I was not aware of him yet. Since I had outgrown my siblings' garments, I was committing significant resources to the purchase of outsized towelling nappies and the largest white nylon tricot pants I could find. Even so, they barely fit and I was starting to think of cutting them up and manufacturing my own. I was fortunate to live in a large home with more than an acre of wooded garden, and my bedroom was in a separate wing away from the rest of the family. This gave me the privacy I needed to carry out my depraved acts. I used to go for moonlit walks at night, wearing nothing but my nappy (and its rustling cover), exploring every nook and cranny of our garden, sitting for hours out in the darkness on a deckchair I had liberated from the pool deck, set up on our property's far boundary, overlooking the city in the valley below. There I would stroke and caress my waterproofs, weaving complex fantasies about everyone in the world one day being compelled to wear them in the interests of world peace.
My routine was pretty much the same each night. I would do my homework, show it to my parents so that they wouldn't come and check up on me later, then retire to my room. After a quick shower, I would stand in front of a full-length mirror and carefully pin on my fluffy white nappy, the prop I needed to pad out the ensemble to get the right look. The mirror was important so that I could get the pins in exactly the right position, a task which was always complicated by having to keep pushing my eager member back into the inviting folds of the nappy. The piece de resistance came next. I would unfold a pair of those glorious nylon waterproofs and roll the white material between my fingers to hear its characteristic crackling sound, then pull it over the bulging nappy.
Then, one night, I was busy dressing when my unruly appendage broke free of the nappy's waistband at the very moment I was pulling the waterproofs up and over the towelling, its head actually touching the rustling plastic. Time stood still as I experienced my very first climax. I hadn't even had a wet dream before (that I knew of), so it came as a complete surprise. After that, “Baby” was in the ascendent.
Nappies functioned to hold my persona together in its darkest hour (puberty and coming of age), both personalities pulling together against the external threats.
There are two types of anxiety: State and Trait. State Anxiety is transient and in defined circumstances (e.g. parachuting without the aeroplane being on fire, appearing on TV etc), while Trait is the underlying, ever-present part of personality which can be experienced in chronic and sometimes episodic form. I found “Baby” inoculated me from my Trait Anxiety through its conditioning to accept the ongoing comfort of being in nappies. I persist in this behaviour because it is highly effective at preventing or soothing my anxiety. I am a pretty anxious person even though I don’t show it.
Now that I discern “Baby” clearly, I know what I’m about. The final point of interest the author made is how the two personalities co-exist. “Baby” is always present and agitating for greater control. “Adult” will never let it happen. However, “Adult” cedes authority when it comes to pleasure – especially sexual pleasure – because of “Baby’s” proven track record there.
The two personalities fully integrate at the moment of orgasm: the rift between them is healed until the period of refraction is complete. I can confirm this: I am at peace; completely at one with myself for at least 15 minutes after. Of course, “Adult” always tries reasserting itself by cleaning up the aftermath much sooner than “Baby” necessarily wants. “Baby” desires nothing more than to lie in bliss, grateful for a brief period of freedom. “Baby” needs gradual let-down – a measured retreat into subordinacy – and craves to revel in a short-lived period of wholeness. Instead, “Adult” officiously refastens the nappy, replaces waterproofs and gets rid of the evidence as quickly as possible.
Looking back on the various scripts I have made over the years, I can see “Baby’s” hand in all of them. It is very clear to me that any appeals to pleasure have to be routed via this shard and never to “Adult”. The first reaction of “Adult” is to reject: it’s all too much trouble / not necessary / not required, simultaneous with “Baby” jumping up and down, saying, “Please! Please! Please!” It’s like the “Adult” applying necessary discipline to an unruly child.
That’s me, anyway.
What a awful curse. 
