ABSTRACT
Freud’s legacy of pathologizing non-normative sexualities continues to this day. Until recently, research has been biased in that hypothetical foundations seek pathology and are non-ethnographically and nonempirically based. Freud’s misinformed classifications, as they pertain to modernday BDSM, live on in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). Over time, these definitions have become central to informing legal opinions and attitudes that lead to social, political, and cultural discrimination and persecution. In the clinical setting, this dynamic results in misdiagnosis due to demonizing what is unknown, feared, and misunderstood.
