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Paper presented at the Sexuality and Sex Post-Sexual Violence: How BDSM, Kink, and Sex can function as Aftercare session of Division 39 2024 Conference, Washington, DC.
Multiple authors differentiate the types of sadism and its intent, unconscious motives, and manifest behaviors (Grossman, 2015; Saketopoulou, 2023), usually as a potential means to control, destroy, or gain mastery over others (Grossman, 2015), “simulated violence” with limited risk to the participants for the “interest of pleasure production” (Saketopoulou, 2023, p. 173), and an “aggressive component of the sexual instinct” (as cited in Grossman, 2015) as defined by Freud. Reflecting on my previous clinical experiences as an early career professional in the wake of Saketopoulou's (2023) book and this year's Division 39 Conference, it has never been clearer the need for her naming of “exigent sadism,” in its pointed, seemingly cruel, pain where both parties take risks, are impacted, and remain attuned in their care and support. It provided an opportunity to write a paper, “On the containing function of kink,” where I outlined two cases where BDSM was a part of my clients’ lives and became the container for myself as the clinician. This approach helped me tolerate projections of violence1 and helped me step into a seemingly necessary sadistic role in the face of extensive sexual assault and relational trauma histories. Through this avenue, I wished to speak more specifically to sadism that may present itself in the therapeutic encounter with survivors of sexual trauma, who may more readily pick up on the sadistic elements of therapy and who may need to relate to the therapist in these ways as a mechanism of working through—or better yet—working in the circulation of trauma.
Without Saketopoulou (2023), I find that there is limited room within our field for kink and trauma to coexist without being pathologized. Her work provided me a way to understand being called “sadistic” in therapy while resisting sh