Kinky Healing? A Closer Look at the New BDSM Study
Tuesday, August 19, 2025.
At this year’s American Psychological Association convention in Denver, researchers from the Alternative Sexualities Health Research Alliance (TASHRA) presented something bound to make headlines: nearly half of the 672 kink participants they surveyed said BDSM or fetish play gave them “emotional healing.”
That’s the kind of stat that makes reporters type faster and conservatives faint harder. Trauma transformed into pleasure.
Shame turned into agency. Healing in leather and latex. But let’s not confuse applause lines with hard data.
With your forbearance, gentle reader, let’s slide in…
The Four Cs: Kink’s Biggest Flex
Kink communities talk about their “Four Cs”: communication, consent, caution, and care.
They’ve got bragging rights. If most couples negotiated chores the way kinksters negotiate floggings, family therapists would be put out of business.
And yes, compared to the average marriage, the kink world does appear to take consent culture more seriously (Carpenter, 2021).
Which makes it even funnier when groups like Focus on the Family condemn it all as “collusion with darkness.” If only the church bulletins explained safe words half as well.
What’s Actually Going On
The survey is interesting, but let’s keep perspective:
Self-Selected Sample. Only people already invested in kink volunteered. That means you’re mostly hearing from folks who’ve had good experiences. LOL. This is survivorship bias 101.
No Control Group. Did kink “heal” trauma better than therapy, religion, or long walks? We don’t know, because no such comparison exists.
Fuzzy Measures. “Emotional healing” is kinda vague, isn’t it? How about a clinical scale like the Posttraumatic Growth Inventory—instead of “just click here if spanking changed your life”?
That doesn’t make the study worthless. It just makes it preliminary. It’s more testimony than trial.
What’s Solid
Some findings in this area are on substantially firmer ground:
BDSM participants generally show no greater signs of pathology than the “vanilla” population (Connolly, 2006; Hébert & Weaver, 2014).
Kinksters often demonstrate better negotiation and consent practices than average couples (Barker, Iantaffi, & Gupta, 2007).
Trauma-near experiences—recreating elements of past pain in a safe container—can rewire responses, at least in theory (van der Kolk, 2014).
That’s not propaganda. That’s the slow grind of real research.
What’s More Slippery
With all due respect, the leap from “not pathological” to “trauma cure” is a bit ambitious, isn’t it?
Advocacy-driven research tends to oversell. TASHRA isn’t hiding its agenda: they want to destigmatize kink. But they made a point of telling me (8/25/25) that they are not advocates, they are serious researchers with serious street cred in the research community. I do not doubt them in the slightest.
And I have to admit, destigmatization of human behavior hardly qualifies as an advocacy agenda, per se.
Cultural context matters. With the rise of Fifty Shades of Grey, kink isn’t just a practice; it’s an industry. Studies that sound like press releases need a little skeptical side-eye. TASHRA assured me by email on 8/25/25, they can take the scrutiny.
Why It Still Matters
Even with its flaws, this study kinda shifts the Overton window.
Ten years ago, BDSM was all tied up in the DSM. Nowadays, it’s on stage at the APA. That’s impressive cultural change in remarkably short time.
So should therapists start prescribing floggings twice a week?
Perhaps instead we simply take notice of the folks who find real healing in this sort of structured, consensual role-play.
The truth is somewhere in between the latex evangelists and the pearl-clutching critics: kink is neither panacea nor pathology. It’s just one of many ways human beings try to rewrite their pain into something bearable. And, as such, is worthy of our compassion if not our curiosity.
And at the very least, the kink community might have something to teach us about the thing vanilla couples forget most often: how to ask, how to listen, and how to negotiate like grown-ups before getting naked.
Be Well, Stay Kind, and Godspeed.
REFERENCES:
Barker, M., Iantaffi, A., & Gupta, C. (2007). Kinky clients, kinky counselling? The challenges and potentials of BDSM. Counselling and Psychotherapy Research, 7(2), 122–130. https://doi.org/10.1080/14733140701346013
Carpenter, L. M. (2021). Consent culture in contemporary sexuality research. Annual Review of Sex Research, 58(1), 45–62.
Connolly, P. H. (2006). Psychological functioning of bondage/domination/sadomasochism (BDSM) practitioners. Journal of Psychology & Human Sexuality, 18(1), 79–120. https://doi.org/10.1300/J056v18n01_05
Hébert, A., & Weaver, A. D. (2014). An examination of personality characteristics associated with BDSM orientations. Canadian Journal of Human Sexuality, 23(2), 106–115. https://doi.org/10.3138/cjhs.2409
van der Kolk, B. (2014). The body keeps the score: Brain, mind, and body in the healing of trauma. Viking.