Stefani Elizabeth Goerlich is one of the clearest contemporary voices in sexology and BDSM research. Born in 1979, she is a licensed clinical social worker, an AASECT-certified sex therapist, and an ABS board-certified Diplomate of Sexology. She founded Bound Together Counseling. The career crosses academic sexology, clinical social work, and community-facing kink education. She is not a pure community-leather figure, and she is not an ivory-tower theorist. The center of the work is kink-aware therapy. She argues that leather and power exchange belong in a competent therapy room as well as in dungeon lore. She is licensed in Michigan, Ohio, Arizona, and Florida. The specialty is gender, sexuality, and relationship diversity, with particular weight on BDSM, ethical non-monogamy, and kink-affirming clinical practice. The clients in view are adults who have negotiated.
The training path is specific. In 2012 she earned a bachelor’s degree in Human Service from Baker College. In 2015 she earned a master’s in social work from Wayne State University, concentrated in cognitive behavioral therapy. She then finished a post-graduate sex-therapy certificate in the University of Michigan’s Sex Health Certificate Program in Ann Arbor. AASECT certification and a specialization in forensic social work sit on top of that, which is how the academic work and the community practice connect. The awards are: the 2009 Coalition of Visionary Resources Award, for Faith and Magick in the Armed Forces; the 2020 AASECT Book Award; the 2022 Society for Sex Therapy and Research (SSTAR) Professional Book Award; the 2022 Media Award from The Society for the Advancement of Sexual Health (SASH); and the 2024 AASECT Sexuality Book Award (General Focus). That cluster of AASECT, SSTAR, and SASH recognition is peer acceptance inside mainstream sex-therapy institutions, past the leather-community presses.
The books work as a ladder. The early one, Faith and Magick in the Armed Forces: A Handbook for Pagans in the Military, published under the name Stefani Barner by Llewellyn in 2008, came out before the full kink-clinical brand. It is a handbook for Pagans in the military. With Routledge she then published two foundational texts for therapists. The Leather Couch: Clinical Practice with Kinky Clients (2020) is for clinicians working with BDSM clients without pathologizing consensual power exchange. Kink-Affirming Practice: Culturally Competent Therapy from the Leather Chair (2022) extends cultural-competence frameworks to clinicians who still treat kink as a red-flag pathology by default. Those clinical books sit next to the trade titles. With Sprinkles on Top: Everything Vanilla People and Their Kinky Partners Need to Know to Communicate, Explore, and Connect (Sounds True, 2023) is the bridge for mixed vanilla and kink couples: what they need is language, not shame. With Elyssa Helfer she wrote BDSM & Kink: The Basics (Routledge, 2024), a short map for professionals and for curious partners. Together the books put her at the center of kink-affirming clinical practice.
