neophyte said:
Yes another post, I am very curios and I enjoy the conversations here. I did do a search on ADISC and nothing came up regarding this topic.
I realized today that to me wearing a diaper is equivalent to a toddler walking around with their security blanket or stuffed animal. This understanding can be useful for some DLs when explaining why they are a DL, we didn't attach to a blanket or a stuffed animal... we naturally attached ourselves to our diaper.
I had seen the term Transitional Phenomenon a few times on the webz, but it didn't hit me until today.
Nearly every toddler becomes attached to a stuffed animal and or a "security blanket", I have personally seen it happen to almost every child in my family. Children become so attached to their stuffed bunny or their blanket that to be without it or to lose it would be to lose the world. We've heard stories of a kid losing their stuffed animal in an airport and mothers will go viral trying to find it. Its their phenomenal object that brings them comfort and calm.
I didn't attach myself to a blanket or a stuffed animal as a toddler; I was attached to diapers. I never wanted to get out of diapers, I always wanted to be in a diaper. I was potty trained by 2.5-3 but I always asked to be put in diapers until I was 4 (parents stopped buying them)
Is it possible that many DLs attached themselves to their diaper, rather than a blanket or a stuffed animal?
Did you have an attachment object that you can remember when you were a baby/toddler?
This phenomenon happens to a child in infancy.
This is about the baby’s first personal possession the first comforting possession known as the Transitional Object that helps the child to console themselves during times of anxiety, when the mother is not there for the child, and is carried with the child all the way through adolescents. These objects range from normally a blanket a teddy bear and yes even a diaper can very normally be that first possession. This is not something to be ashamed of or afraid of for any child or parent.
neophyte
You are absolutely correct. The concept of Transitional Objects is essential to understanding ABDL. I believe it is a psychological process at work for any ABDL who derives emotional comfort from their diapers. It works at an unconscious level, whether the ABDL is aware of the psychological process, or not.
For ABDLs wearing and using diapers is a highly effective means of deriving emotional comfort. It prevents or soothes anxiety. It is a means of self-soothing. That is a distinctive psychological phenomena, at odds with the psychology of the vast majority of the adolescent and adult population who would be greatly dis-comforted by wearing diapers. That disparity is even greater when we consider that many ABDLs intensify their experience of comfort by urinating, or less commonly, defecating in their diapers. Again that is completely at odds with how the vast majority of adults would react. It demands explanation. For ABDLs our diapers are Transitional Objects. That is an established and widely accepted concept in psychology. It originated with Donald Winnicott in a 1953 article
‘Transitional Objects and Transitional Phenomena—A Study of the First Not-Me Possession’ (and restated in his last 1971 book,
Playing and Reality).
What are Transitional Objects? Let me explain. It is commonly understood objects like stuffed toys can help calm a baby or young child. They can help the child go to sleep or tolerate the temporary absence of their caregiver. Winnicott understood it is not just a case of a child deriving comfort from a familiar, but physically inanimate object. To the child the Transitional Object is not inanimate. In the psyche of the child the Transitional Object is alive and represents and embodies the caregiver – the object
is the caregiver. Thus -
“The object, because it is a substitute for the “aliveness” of the mother, must begin with a sense of aliveness imbued to it by the child. A ‘dead’ or inert transitional object cannot exist because it would be an atrocious substitute from the very start.” [Steven Tuber. Attachment, Play and Authenticity p154]
“The baby at the point of hope is also able to create a transitional object to maintain hope. Transitional phenomena allow the child to maintain hope because she can use the object(s) to symbolically recreate the absent internal experience of the parent and thus avoid despair and loss.” [Steven Tuber. Attachment, Play and Authenticity p191]
It is called a Transitional Object because it exists between subjective and objective reality. The child’s psyche endows an inanimate object with a subjective meaning which is not intrinsic in its objective, physical form. Typically, not any random soft toy or object can be an effective source of such comfort, because the child has invested a specific toy with that subjective meaning. As transitional phenomena, the object’s meaning goes beyond the confines of the child’s mind, and is apparent to, and can be shared with, others. So, a caregiver might ask a crying or fussing child, ‘want your teddy,’ knowing it has a special meaning for the child.
This psychological mechanism works at the deepest, earliest, subconscious levels of a child’s psyche. Biological children first create Transitional Objects when they are between 4 and 12 months old (Winnicott. Playing and Reality p4). That is before they have language or abstract thought. Infants first create Transitional Objects when they realize that their primary caregiver is separate from themselves. In response to the anxiety created by that realization they endow an inanimate object, typically something with a soft texture which can be cuddled or put in the mouth, with special properties. Transitional Objects are a child’s first step towards psychological independence, they are a means by which a child comforts
themselves.
Winnicott’s statement emphasizes the role of the Transitional Object as a means of preventing anxiety –
“Also, out of all this (if we study any one infant) there may emerge some thing or some phenomenon – perhaps a bundle of wool or the corner of a blanket or eiderdown, or a word or a tune, or a mannerism – that becomes vitally important for the infant to use at the time of going to sleep, and is a defence against anxiety, especially anxiety of the depressive type. … Patterns set in infancy may persist into childhood, so that the original soft object continues to be absolutely necessary at bed-time or at time of loneliness or when a depressed mood threatens. …. A need for a specific object or a behavior pattern that started at very early date may reappear at a later age when deprivation threatens.” [Winnicott. Playing and Reality p4]
Winnicott notes that a true Transitional Object “is more important than the mother, an almost inseparable part of the infant” (Winnicott. Playing and Reality p7). That is consistent with the deep psychological importance diapers have for ABDLs. Writing in the era of cloth diapers, Winnicott also cites diapers (presumably in their unfolded form) in the list of items which are candidates to be adopted by the infant as a Transitional Object (Winnicott. Playing and Reality p3).
For ABDLs, urinating in the diaper increases its efficacy as a Transitional Object. It harkens back to the time in infancy or early childhood when a wet diaper was associated with the likelihood of gaining the attention of the caregivers. Defecating in the diaper is another escalation in that trajectory. For the minority, who commonly defecate in their diapers, it likely an indication of a deeper need for the diaper as a Transitional Object, a deeper need for emotional comfort.
The key point is, for infants and young children, Transitional Objects are a powerful and subconscious psychological mechanism. The child is not aware of the psychological processes by which they gain such deep emotional comfort from their stuffed toy or security blanket, or whatever form their Transitional Object takes. Adults can also gain emotional comfort from Transitional Objects, either in a similar form to those used by young children (ie. sleeping with a teddy bear), or in a more sublimated adult form (such as cigarettes or a favourite bag or briefcase). But in either case they probably do not approach the original efficacy of the infant’s first Transitional Object. The adult need not be aware of the psychological explanation for Transitional Objects to derive comfort from them.
ABDLs are different from most other adults, in that the form of their Transitional Objects retains their original, infantile character (diapers, stuffed toys, pacifiers etc). Most importantly, ABDLs are able to access, undiluted, the original efficacy that Transitional Objects had for infants and young children. ABDLs are able to so effectively derive emotional comfort from wearing and using their diapers as Transitional Objects because part of our psyche – our Little - replicates some part of the psyche of a biological infant or very young child. This process is involuntary.
Regards. Dylan.
