Alexithymics are known to report more somatic complaints than individuals scoring low on alexithymia. It was examined whether alexithymia would also be associated with enhanced sensitivity to an externally administered unpleasant physical stimulus. Forty-one healthy male and female subjects with a mean age of 33.9 years completed the 20-item version of the Toronto Alexithymia Scale and particip...

This paper presents a processing theory of alexithymia in terms of failure of report across the components of emotional processing and the nature of explicit and implicit knowledge. The typical features of alexithymia (e.g., failure of cue recognition, flattened expression, inability to articulate emotional states) correspond to disruptions at the interfaces of components in emotional processin...

Alexithymia is a multifaceted personality construct, which includes difficulties in identifying and expressing feelings and an externally-oriented cognitive style. We investigated the effects of alexithymia and its subscales on recall and recognition rates for neutral, joy, disgust and anger words. We found that the alexithymia-factor difficulties identifying feelings was negatively associated ...

OBJECTIVES The purpose of this research was to investigate alexithymia among parents of a daughter with eating disorders (EDs) and to relate alexithymia to personality and psychopathology characteristics. METHODS Parents of 73 women with ED (20 with anorexia nervosa, restrictive subtype (ANR), 23 with anorexia nervosa, bulimic subtype (ANB) and 30 with bulimia nervosa (BN)) and parents of 72 ...

Psychotherapists are often aware of the difficulty in treating patients using dynamic methods when patients have a predominant somatic presentation with poor psychological elaboration of their difficulties. Sifneos (1972) coined the term 'alexithymia' to describe patients who have difficulty in recognising and verbalising their emotions, associated with a restricted fantasy experience. Freyberg...

This study rationally and scientifically examines the similarities between the emotional numbing symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and alexithymia. A clinical database from the Iowa City Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center consisting of data from 274 combat veterans was used. Significant positive correlations were found between measures of PTSD, alexithymia, and combat ...

OBJECTIVE The literature regarding research into alexithymia and sympathetic responses is far from consistent. An explanation might be on the way subjects are classified. Generally, subjects are diagnosed as either alexithymic or non-alexithymic on the basis of questionnaires focusing on the cognitive aspects of alexithymia. However, alexithymia, as originally defined, concerns both emotion-aff...

QUESTIONS UNDER STUDY In recent years, distress and alexithymia have been recognised as psychosocial factors related to both somatic and psychosomatic diseases. In this study distress and alexithymia and their associations with physical parameters were investigated in lung recipients. METHODS The study, which included 76 patients after a lung transplant, measured psychological distress (Sympt...

BACKGROUND Alexithymia, the inability to describe one's own emotions, is linked to deficits in empathy, manifesting as a diminished capacity to recognize or understand the emotions and mental states of others. Several brain centers of autonomic control and interoception that are activated in empathy are thought to misfunction in alexithymia. We hypothesized that individual differences in autono...

BACKGROUND: Alexithymia is a personality trait characterized by difficulties in the experience and cognitive processing of emotions. It is considered a risk factor for a range of psychiatric and neurological disorders. Functional neuroimaging studies investigating the neural correlates of alexithymia have reported inconsistent results. METHODS: To integrate previous findings, we conducted a par...