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A Review of the Alexithymia Concept
Abstract
Alexithymia is a term meaning "no words for mood." It has been applied to patients who have marked difficulty in verbal expression of emotions and limited ability to use fantasy. These patients often have psychosomatic illnesses and tend to do poorly in traditional dynamic psychotherapy. The concept is discussed from an historical perspective and its current status in the understanding of psychosomatic illness is assessed. The alexithymia literature is critically reviewed with a focus on definition, measurement, etiological speculations, and the relevance of alexithymia to the psychotherapeutic process. The alexithymic concept has much to offer heuristically, but most of the literature to date has been anecdotal and theoretical, with few research investigations. Suggestions are made for future research that could serve to validate the concept and provide answers to questions regarding symptom formation and psychological problems.
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Citations
Cited by
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“The reported propensity for psychosomatic disturbances in such patients was supposed to be either due to the inability for conscious mental experience of emotion or due to a motivated somatic displacement from experiences they were unable to cope with (Lesser, 1981).”
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Changes in Alexithymia Following Psychological Intervention: A Review
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The Multifaceted Nature of Alexithymia – A Neuroscientific Perspective
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Cognitive and psychosocial deficits in agenesis of the corpus callosum with normal intelligence
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Is alexithymia related to psychosomatic disorder and somatizing?
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Alexithymia, cumulative feedback, and differential response patterns on the iowa gambling task
Ferguson, E., Bibby, P. A., Rosamond, S., O'Grady, C., Parcell, A., Amos, C., McCutcheon, C., & O'Carroll, R. (2009) · Journal of Personality · doi:10.1111/j.1467-6494.2009.00568.x · Cited by 36
Alexithymia and Empathy Predict Changes in Autonomic Arousal During Affective Stimulation
Bogdanov, V. B., Bogdanova, O. V., Gorlov, D. S., Gorgo, Y. P., Dirckx, J. J. J., Makarchuk, M. Y., Schoenen, J., & Critchley, H. (2013) · Cognitive and Behavioral Neurology · doi:10.1097/wnn.0000000000000002 · Cited by 32
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Metadata
- Authors
- Lesser, I. M.
- Venue
- Psychosomatic Medicine
- Published
- 1981-12
- Volume
- 43
- Issue
- 6
- Pages
- 531-543
- ISSN
- 0033-3174 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W2000103380
- Cited by
- 252
- References
- 0
- FWCI
- 6.33
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
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Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
