Latest article on therapy with kinky clients

Y. Gavriel Ansara has just had an article published in the Psychotherapy and Counseling Journal of Australia that reviews some of the research around therapy with kinky clients.

It does a great job of discussing stigmatizing beliefs that might be held by therapists and counselors about kink and BDSM, and offers some specific guidelines to address the issues.

It is a longer read, but very well supported by the literature, and accurately summarizes and captures the main points from previous research efforts.

The article also proposes a particular phenomenon called “freefall” which is meant to capture the emotional dysregulation that occurs when a person’s core needs/desires for BDSM or kink are not able to be fulfilled. People may attempt to express their needs/desires in subtle ways in interaction - and perhaps this is similar to “bleed through” when emotional and relational issues outside of a scene influence how a kink/BDSM scene unfolds.

The article is worthy of attention and discussion. Congrats to Y. Gavriel Ansara for this work.