Kink, Pathology and Perversion: a critique

Darren Langdridge is Professor of Psychology and Sexuality at the Open University (UK). "In this talk I will discuss extant understandings of kink within psychiatry, psychology and psychotherapy, particularly the historical tendency to treat kink practices and identities as pathology and/or perversion.  I'll explore a critique of this pathologising stance in the context of recent changes to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the American Psychiatric Association and contemporary criticism and revision of psychoanalysis. Finally, I will discuss the tensions inherent in community uses of therapeutic (often psychiatric and psychoanalytic) ways of understanding kink practices and identities. That is, I'll explore the potential 'perversity' of communities employing the language of psychopathology (and the therapeutic more broadly) just at the point we are managing to persuade some elements of the psychiatric profession to stop thinking of kink as pathology and/or perversion."