Recently, researchers at several institutions including the University of Northern Illinois surveyed experienced BDSM players to determine how bondage, discipline, and sado-masochism sessions affected them. The kinksters showed no negative effects at all. Instead, they reported a pleasantly altered state of consciousness similar to what people experience during other enjoyable activities — a mindset involving reduced stress, a more positive outlook on life, and increased sexual arousal. The researchers concluded that far from threatening mental health, BDSM actually contributes to it.

The new study is just one of many over the past 25 years to show that BDSM players have no psychological problems unique to their kinky play, and are no more likely than the general population to suffer from psychiatric problems:

BDSM players represent a cross-section of the population—the people next door, mentally healthy and typical in every respect, except that they find conventional sex unfulfilling and want something more exciting and intimate.

No one knows when humanity discovered BDSM, but ancient Greek art depicts what looks like it. In 1905, without research that would be considered mandatory today, Sigmund Freud declared that “sado-masochism” signaled severe neurosis. For more than a century, mental-health professionals agreed. The first edition of the American Psychiatric Association’s bible of mental illness, the Diagnostic and........

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