Four decades of research on alexithymia: moving toward clinical applications

Frontiers in Psychology

Dalya Samur¹ 

关键词: alexithymia;    treatment;    implications;    oxytocin;    neurofeedback;    emotion processing;   

DOI  :  10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00861

学科分类：心理学（综合）

来源: Frontiers

【 摘 要 】

Virtually everyone has experienced from time to time how hard it can be to put one's feelings into words. Yet, for some individuals, this task is especially daunting. Such individuals are characterized by high levels of alexithymia (“no words for feelings”). Alexithymia is a personality dimension that involves both cognitive deficits, including difficulties in recognizing, describing, and distinguishing feelings from bodily sensations of emotional arousal, and affective deficits, including difficulties in emotionalizing and fantasizing (Bermond et al., 2007). Alexithymia is implicated in a wide variety of psychological problems, such as depression (Honkalampi et al., 2000) and schizophrenia (Rotenberg, 1994). Moreover, emotional deficits in autism spectrum disorder may be largely driven by alexithymia (Bird and Cook, 2013). Finally, alexithymia is associated with suicidality (Hintikka et al., 2004), increased psychosomatic complaints (Lane, 2008) and elevated mortality rates (Tolmunen et al., 2010).

【 授权许可】

CC BY