Alexithymia is a personality construct whose Latin compounds literally mean “no words for feelings” . In this text you're going to read about: The emergence of the alexithymia concept, Description of alexithymia by Sifneos and Nemiah, Explanatory examples for the core features, Recent approaches, Empathic abilities in alexithymia, Neural substrates Historically, alexithymia was first put forward in the context of somatoform disorders by Sifneos (1970) as a dichotomous clinical variable based on a conjoint work with Nemiah. In fact, clinical observations related to alexithymia were already reported by many psychiatrists, way before Sifneos brought about the term. At that time, psychosomatic disorders were explained through Freudian theories which highlight the unconscious conflicts as a reason for physical symptoms. However, difficulties to reach empirical evidence which has already caused to get theories of Freud frequent criticism throughout his life continued to be t...
Our body is working without stop. The heart is beating, the lung is allowing to inhale and exhale the air, the stomach is trying to digest the food eaten, and all the other internal organs keep working without any break so that they keep you alive. Humans cannot control these visceral activities. They function automatically, without our permission. Yet, this does not necessarily mean that we are not aware of them. People have the capacity to be aware of the stimuli created in the body performing internal activities. Interoceptive awareness refers to one’s ability to perceive and sense those signals that originated in the body. Photo by KALZ 📸 🇺🇬 from Pexels Interoceptive awareness is a very insightful and perspective concept for all subdisciplines of psychology. For example, in terms of mental disorders, a considerable number of researches showed a link between negative mood states and maladaptive function of interoception, in the meaning of, misinterpretations or misperceptio...