CARAS Webinar: A Psychoanalytic Approach to Understanding Risk-Aware Consensual Kink (RACK): Limit Consent, Overwhelm, and Traumatophilia

**Special Day: Monday, September 13 for the CARAS webinar

A Psychoanalytic Approach to Understanding Risk-Aware Consensual Kink (RACK): Limit Consent, Overwhelm, and Traumatophilia

Avgi Saketopoulou, Psy.D., will present a two hour workshop on Monday, September 13, from 12-2 pm Pacific, 3-5 pm Eastern, 8-10 pm London

Kink-aware therapists are understandably cautious around psychoanalysis since it has historically tended to pathologize non-normative sexualities. Pathologization, however, is not part-and-parcel of psychoanalytic theory: it is a function, rather, of how psychoanalytic ideas have been mis-used.

This presentation is a corrective move. It demonstrates that psychoanalysis is both incredibly capacious and clinically useful in thinking about kink and D/s in a sex-positive manner. To that end, I introduce the notions of limit consent and of traumatophilia, both of which we will discuss in depth. Together, they offer inroads to thinking about the RACK model of BDSM life, and clinical paths to working with practitioners who are drawn to the site of their trauma. Such revisitations, we will see, are not necessarily compulsive but can, oftentimes, have psychically expansive potential. Clinical examples will help illustrate these points followed by ample time for discussion with attendees.

Learning objectives:

1. Participants will be able to explain the difference between traumatophilic and traumatophobic approaches to BDSM

2. Participants will be able to discuss why thinking about personal and structural trauma does not have to amount to a pathologizing approach to BDSM practices and D/s relationships

3. Participants will be able to explain the differences between affirmative consent models and the concept of limit consent

The presentation offers 2 CE credits (APA). This is free to subscribers to CARAS, $20 for non-subscribers who don't need CE credit, and $30 for non-subscribers who want CE credit.

To register for the Webinar, please visit: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSflOL9wtTQxPCNW5VPcZJhhUw8qHoj43dzyfd3L_FIfVJvBAw/viewform

For more information about CARAS Continuing Education offerings and policies, please visit https://www.carasresearch.org/apa-continuing-education .