The Tennessee Licensed Professional Counselors Association hosted a session on “puppy play” and other fetishes at the organization’s annual summit last weekend.

The organization of counselors, whose mission is “to enhance the profession of mental health counseling in Tennessee and its regions, through licensing, advocacy, education and professional development,” featured forty-seven breakout sessions at the summit, some of which had conference attendees raising their eyebrows. Among the sessions was one entitled “Bark! The Kink and Culture of Human Puppy Play.”

The learning objectives for the session were for participants to be able to explain “the potential therapeutic benefit of BDSM kink expression,” identify “reasons a person might be inclined to participate” in puppy play, and familiarize themselves with “resources for further investigation into the phenomenon of puppy play,” according to an entry in the conference program. The conference was hosted at Trevecca Nazarene University in Nashville, Tennessee, a Christian school associated with the Church of the Nazarene.

“This workshop will explore the phenomenon of human puppy play. Puppy play refers to a form of roleplay in which an individual mimics the behavior of young dogs," the program explained. "Neither beastiality, nor zoophilia, it is rather, a form of kink, community, and subculture. Workshop participants will learn about the practice from both a psychological and cultural frame of reference. This knowledge can assist the counselor in better understanding their kink oriented clients.”

A counselor who attended the session told The Sentinel that twenty-three people participated and that three or four attendees were enthusiastic participants.

Puppy play kink recently made headlines when the Biden administration hired Sam Brinton, a puppy play fetishist, to be an official in the Department of Energy. Brinton was later fired and jailed on charges of stealing women’s luggage and clothing from airports.

Another session entitled “Legi-SLAY-tion: Supporting Transgender and Gender Expansive Communities in Counseling” sought to help attendees “understand state legislation impacting transgender and gender-expansive people in Tennessee” and “identify trans-affirmative counseling practices for working with transgender and gender-expansive people in Tennessee.”

“In 2023 alone, more than 300 anti-LGBTQ+ bills have been proposed or passed in legislative bodies across the nation,” the session overview asserted. “Multiple bills specifically targeting transgender and gender expansive (TGE) communities in Tennessee have already been signed into law and advanced through committee. How do these bills impact mental health professionals? This presentation will provide an overview of these laws and best practices in supporting TGE clients across the lifespan.”

PaQuita Pullen, the president of the Tennessee Licensed Professional Counselors Association, led a session of her own entitled “‘Soul’-Care: Implications and Practices for BIPOC and LGBTQAI+ Clinicians.” Her suggestions for dealing with the “unique stressors” of “microaggressions'' and “targeted legislation,” according to her slideshow, included doing a “body scan,” “connecting with the ancestors,” and engaging in “embodying music.”

A counselor who attended a session entitled “Ethics of Multicultural Perspectives” told The Sentinel that a participant asked, “Is slavery, colonialism, ecological destruction, the sham of real estate, and myth of personal property something we should be addressing as professionals, and should we be making those things the primary focus of therapy and trauma assessment, particularly with BIPOC, LGBTQIA+, fat, and other marginalized communities?”

Summit attendees also had the opportunity to attend “Replenishing Drum Circle for Providers.” The conference program said that participants of this session “may experience a reduction in stress,” “may experience a renewed connection with their profession,” and “may experience an increased connection within themselves and others.”

Mental health professionals are overwhelmingly liberal, with ninety Democrats to every ten Republicans in the field, as measured by campaign contribution data.

The Sentinel contacted the Tennessee Licensed Professional Counselors Association for comment and will update this article with any response.