Summer Reading...

I am working on my Guide to #ABDL. I've been doing a shit ton of research. Today I came across something that I'd seen before, back when it was first published around 2000, 2001. I remember that someone posted it on a diaper forum on DPF.com or somewhere, and I read the article. Twelve years later the article is still online, and in trying to find more information on Transactional Analysis, and how it relates to diaper fetish, infantilism, and ABDL I started looking for more information. 

The book is called All My Children, and it's by a woman named Jacqui Lee Schiff. Dr. Schiff was the "mother" of Transactional Analysis - a type of therapy designed for those deemed in need of it - typically people who are schizophrenic, or who were schizophrenic in Dr. Schiff's eyes at least, depending on who is telling the story. 

In TA, the "patient" - Schiff would refer to them as her "children" or her "babies" - would move into her XXXL house and undergo "therapy" wherein they would essentially be diapered and forced to live as newborn babies. 

Well, forced may not be the right word. Some clearly wanted to be there, wherein others did not. 

The patients ran from ages seven to twenty-seven, tending to be in their early 20s, and Dr. Schiff would actually legally adopt some. This was in the 1970s and 1980s, it seems, and this did not raise red flags with any kind of medical governing body the way it might today. Even after a patient was scalded in the bathtub and died, Dr. Schiff was considered a darling in the TA community. 

She was, in essence, the first ABDL mommy. 

Imagine being schizophrenic - or, according to her critics, not all that schizophrenic - and undergoing therapy in which you are diapered, and forced to use diapers around-the-clock. Your "mommy" is very strict - if you forget to call her "Mommy" she may take off your diaper and spank you with a paddle or beat you with a whip - and there are "corner contracts" you must sign before you can even begin undergoing your "treatment." (Some people were said to spend hours a day in the corner... naughty, naughty.) 

Not only did Dr. Schiff treat her "patients" this way... she held retreats for other therapists and they, too, were required to Pamp up. (If you read the article linked at the bottom of this entry, you'll read how one therapist was punished for refusing to poop. Eek!) Doctors, it seemed, could not wait to get diapered by this woman, and many went on to practice this type of therapy with their own patients. 

Dr. Schiff was banished from Virginia, where she'd begun practicing, after the aforementioned patient death. But she took her practice to other states, and then to the UK, and finally India. 

She is dead now, but it's said that there are others offering this type of therapy, although it's mostly fallen out of favor here in the US, for obvious reasons. 

Today, however, children from war-torn regions are sometimes still treated with a similar treatment path. There is a school of therapy which advocates taking children from places like the Balkans - children who tend to be super-angry, sullen, disobedient, and detached - and treating them as infants. They are called R.A.D. kids - Reactive Attachment Disorder kids - and the idea - taken in part from Schiff - is that a combination of ultra-strictness and infantilization will help them overcome their distrust of adults. Doesn't make a lot of sense to me either, but there are quite a few foster parents who are counseled to do it - and I imagine some members of our community are RAD Reparenting refugees. 

The description below is from Wikipedia; there are much more detailed descriptions out there, and one day I will write an entire entry on this, including a 'guest entry' from someone who underwent this as a teen. For now...

Attachment therapy is a treatment used primarily with fostered or adopted children who have behavioral difficulties, sometimes severe, but including disobedience and perceived lack of gratitude or affection for their caregivers. The children's problems are ascribed to an inability to attach to their new parents because of suppressed rage due to past maltreatment and abandonment. The common form of attachment therapy is holding therapy, in which a child is firmly held (or lain upon) by therapists or parents. Through this process of restraint and confrontation, therapists seek to produce in the child a range of responses such as rage and despair with the goal of achieving catharsis. In theory, when the child's resistance is overcome and the rage is released, the child is reduced to an infantile state in which he or she can be "re-parented" by methods such as cradling, rocking, bottle feeding and enforced eye contact. The aim is to promote attachment with the new caregivers. Control over the children is usually considered essential and the therapy is often accompanied by parenting techniques which emphasize obedience. These accompanying parenting techniques are based on the belief that a properly attached child should comply with parental demands "fast, snappy and right the first time" and should be "fun to be around". These techniques have been implicated in several child deaths and other harmful effects.

Notice how that last statement is just kind of thrown in? 

The reason this is not used more often is because of several deaths which have occurred. One involved a young girl being held down under a blanket in a "rebirthing" exercise. She stopped breathing. Go figure.

The above passage no longer mentions the part about the caregiver forcing the patient to wear diapers - and permit toileting only with the caregiver's permission. I'll find that passage and include it in a future entry. But if you read the article about Dr. Schiff, and then read the passage above, you'll see that Dr. Schiff was a pioneer - and others followed, and still use her techniques today. 

You can read the article A Most Dangerous Method from the Chicago Reader here. 

The article has a lot of information that's not necessary for the piece, so try to skip past it. But you'll want to read the whole story if this is something that interests you. It's pretty fucking fascinating. 

I don't know how I feel about being forced to live as an infant for the treatment of schizophrenia. But I do think it would be a sweet, sweet treatment for depression, anxiety, and a whole lot of other mental health issues - for consenting adult patients, of course.

How do y'all feel? 

Share below, or hit me up at abysitter@gmail.com. 

PS - Anyone own this book? I am thinking of buying a copy.