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The Infantilist's Declaration of Independence From Ignorance

The Infantilist's Declaration of Independence from Ignorance

An Open Letter to Any Mental Health Professional Who May Have Found This Site:

Dear Mental Health Professional;
If you may have come across the Infantilist Support Network in a search for viable treatment options for any prospective or current clients, please be both forewarned and also welcomed. We forewarn you because you may find yourself being personally challenged to redefine your previous definitions of what is acceptable behavior and what is not. We welcome you because, to the best of our knowledge to date, there has not yet been any systematic and thorough research done in this area of psychology, and also to the best of our knowledge, no known therapeutic cure for this behavior pattern has yet been discovered.
If any licensed mental health professional may know of the existence of a repeatable and provable system of therapy with a significantly high success ratio, we heartily welcome their input, and all pertinent details of any such therapy will be posted freely on this website. We offer this as a standing challenge to any mental health professional who would be so bold as to accept the challenge we lay down before you. To date, the Infantilist Support Network has been in existence for many years, since 1997, and as of this writing, not a single mental health professional has yet risen to this challenge and stepped forward to offer such a provably successful therapy.
While at the outset, many aspects of infantilism, as defined by this site, may appear to be maladaptive and even psychotic behavior patterns, we hold that such an initial diagnosis is usually mistaken (admittedly, there are some infantilists who exhibit other genuinely maladaptive traits, combined with their infantilistic practices). In and of itself, we hold that infantilism, if regulated so as not to unduly interfere with one's normal work and social life, can be regarded as a healthy and "least destructive" possible response to an earlier life event. In many cases, it has been proven that earlier forms of related trauma may be a component, and possible root cause of infantilism. In many cases this is less clear.

Until any mental health professional should clearly prove the following two points:

That the practice of infantilism is consistently and without fail, a maladaptive behavior pattern, being clearly a self destructive and anti-social behavior.
That there are indeed other viable treatment options available, with proven success rates.

Until these two points can be clearly proven, we will stand firmly by the position that infantilism, when properly balanced and integrated into a person's life, is not something to be treated as an illness, or to be considered as a behavior pattern which must be eliminated. We hold rather that in most cases, where a reasonable balance and integration have been achieved, it is:

A private choice that is is best left entirely up to the individual.
A personal choice deserving of the same types of social respect and legal protections as all other non-destructive personal and private matters currently deserve and receive in our modern-day society.

Many of us have been wrongfully treated with shock treatments and powerful drugs, we have been misdiagnosed and treated as DID/MPD patients, and any number of other sad misdiagnoses and treatment regimens, we have had our privacies illegally invaded, sometimes by supposedly "well-intentioned family members" who have sometimes attempted to force us, against our wills, into various treatment programs that had no proven records of success. We therefore refuse to any longer accept the false promises and misjudgments of sometimes misguided family members and mental health care professionals, some of whom may inadvertently be more interested in securing new business for their practices than in actually delivering a valuable and credibly proven form of treatment therapy.
While there may be those infantilists who would offer themselves for experimental therapy programs, we ask that any mental health professional who might offer such a therapy would please exercise full-disclosure whenever initially offering any such therapy program, and fully inform any prospective clients of the real and proven prognosis, so as not to mislead or misinform any potential clients in any way. By exercising full-disclosure, mental health professionals will not only be protecting themselves from potential liability, but they will also be assuring that prospective clients will not be developing unreasonable or false expectations of their experimental therapy program(s).
Meanwhile, as infantilists, most of us continue to hold regular and sometimes well paying jobs, to have families, and to function in a more typical way in every other aspect of our lives. We therefore refuse to any longer be stigmatized or to have our dignity and our privacy unnecessarily, and sometimes illegally violated, for what most of us have found to be no more malleable or changeable than many other atypical sexual practices. As such we will continue to live our lives as we see fit in the privacy of our own homes.
We welcome any sincere, non-pre-judgmental, and ethically responsible research work that any mental health professional may wish to perform regarding this phenomenon. For further information, please contact the webmaster at: scottp@infantilistsupport.net.