Alexithymia as a personality construct: concept, clinical, etiology and therapeutic approach.
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.35954/SM2011.30.1.6Keywords:
Alexithymia; Therapeutic Approach; Psychology.Abstract
The term alexithymia was coined by Dr. Peter Sifneos (1), a Harvard psychiatrist, to refer to a disorder of the cognitive-affective sphere that affects the way people experience and express their emotions. The first observations were made in patients with psychosomatic disorders, which led to the erroneous belief that there was an etiological relationship between alexithymia and psychosomatic illness. Alexithymia has also been observed in patients with pathologies such as chronic psychogenic pain (2), substance abuse disorders (3,4), masked depressions (4), sexual perversions (5), character neuroses (6) as well as life-threatening asthma (7). However, not all patients with psychosomatic or other pathology exhibit alexithymic features.
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