Emotional blindness

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Emotional blindness or alexithymia is a concept of psychosomatic disease. The terms emotional coldness , more rarely emotional dyslexia or in international literature alexithymia are also used .

The term was coined in 1973 by the American psychiatrists John Case Nemiah (1918-2009) and Peter Emanuel Sifneos (1920-2008). They used this to describe the inability of their patients with somatized complaints to adequately perceive their own feelings and to describe them in words. In the interview, those affected appeared to be poor in imagination and functional, considered their complaints to be purely physical and remained silent on emotional issues.

Since the 1990s, attempts have been made to objectify this fuzzy assessment using modern methods, e.g. B. through questionnaires and scores . Alexithymia is not yet included in the ICD-10 or DSM-5 .

Word origin

Alexithymia is an artificial word , formed from the Greek roots α- ( a- ) "not", ἡ λέξις ( he léxis ) "speech / word" and ὁ θυμός ( ho thymós ) "mind"; ἡ λέξις in turn comes from λέγω, which also means “to read”; Alexithymia can therefore be translated as: "Inability to 'read' and express feelings".

Modern usage of terms

The original concept that alexithymia is a personality disorder that causes psychosomatic symptoms has not been confirmed. In modern psychosomatic literature, however, the term continues to be used for an inadequate reaction to stressful events in people with low emotional intelligence ; for example, nausea and palpitations are not recognized as expressions of fear, but are interpreted purely physically.

There are approaches to measure the degree of alexithymic personality, for example with the Levels of Emotional Awareness Scales (LEAS, Lane et al., 1998) and the Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS-20, Bagby et al., 1994). In Germany around 10% of all adults are said to be severely impaired by alexithymia. It is increasingly observed in people without a partner, without religious affiliation, in the unemployed and people with a low socio-economic status (strongest predictor ).

It is obvious to look for statistical connections between alexithymic personality traits and physical or psychosomatic illnesses. An overview of such work can be found at Kupfer, Brosig and Brähler. Modern alexithymic research is also looking for a neurobiological (organic brain) correlate of impaired affect processing , for example with functional MRI and PET .

Nevertheless, the practical meaning of alexithymia remains unclear, especially since lay psychology has taken hold of the term and even specialist authors with other things, e.g. B. use the term differently with a depth psychological background. You mean by it

  1. an attachment disorder and as a deficit in mentalizing affects ,
  2. a neuropsychological deficit in affect regulation ,
  3. a symbolization disorder of linguistic socialization , or
  4. a countertransference phenomenon in the therapeutic relationship.

literature

  • B. Brosig, JP Kupfer, M. Wölfelschneider, E. Brähler: Prevalence and sociodemographic predictors of alexithymia in Germany - results of a representative survey. In: Journal for Clinical Psychology, Psychiatry and Psychotherapy. 52, 2004, pp. 237-251.
  • H. Gündel, AO Ceballos-Baumann, M. von Rad: Current Perspectives of Alexithymia. In: Neurologist. 71, No. 3, 2000, pp. 151-163.
  • KD Hoppe: On the current research on alexithymia. Critique of an "instrumentalizing" critique. In: Psyche . Journal of Psychoanalysis. 43, 1989, pp. 1029-1043.
  • J. Kupfer, B. Brosig, E. Brähler: Toronto-Alexithymie-Skala-26. German version. Hogrefe Verlag, Göttingen / Bern 2001.
  • P. Marty, M. de M'Uzan: Operative thinking (”pensée opératoire”). In: Psyche . Journal of Psychoanalysis. 32, 1978, pp. 974-984.
  • Michael von Rad (Ed.): Alexithymie. Empirical studies for the diagnosis and therapy of psychosomatically ill. Springer, Berlin 1983, ISBN 3-540-12141-2 .
  • JC Nemiah, PE Sifneos: Affect and fantasy in patients with psychosomatic disorders . In: OW Hill (Ed.): Modern Trends in Psychosomatic Medicine Volume 2. Butterworths, London 1970, pp. 26-34.
  • JC Nemiah, H. Freyberger, PE Sifneos: Alexithymia: A view of the psychosomatic process . In: OW Hill (Ed.): Modern Trends in Psychosomatic Medicine. Volume 3. Butterworths, London 1976, pp. 430-439.
  • B. Weidenhammer: Considerations on the term alexithymia: psychological conflict and linguistic behavior. A contribution to phenomenology. In: Journal for Psychosomatic Medicine and Psychotherapy. 1986; 32, pp. 60-65.
  • GJ Taylor, RM Bagby, JDA Parker: The alexithymia construct: a potential paradigm for psychosomatic medicine. In: Psychosomatics. 32, 1991, pp. 153-164.

Web links

Wiktionary: Emotional blindness  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Otto F. Kernberg: Narcissism: Basics - Disorders - Therapy . Schattauer Verlag, 2006, ISBN 3-7945-2241-9 , pp. 557 ff . ( books.google.com ).
  2. ↑ a b Keyword Alexi | thymie. In: Duden . The Dictionary of Medical Terms. PC library software . Bibliographical Institute , Mannheim
  3. ↑ Hans Morschitzky : Anxiety disorders: diagnostics, concepts, therapy, self-help . Springer, 2009, ISBN 978-3-211-09448-8 , pp. 324 ff . ( books.google.com ).
  4. ^ Matthias Franz: From affect to compassion: Developmental psychological and neuroscientific aspects of emotional regulation using the example of alexithymia. ( Memento of October 2, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 86 kB).
  5. ^ V. Hackenbroch: Blind for anger and joy. In: Der Spiegel. December 1, 2003.
  6. Jump up ↑ A. Fossati, E. Acquarini, JA Feeney, S. Borroni, F. Grazioli, LE Giarolli, G. Franciosi, C. Maffei: Alexithymia and attachment insecurities in impulsive aggression. In: Attachment & human development. Volume 11, Number 2, March 2009, pp. 165-182, ISSN  1469-2988 . doi: 10.1080 / 14616730802625235 . PMID 19266364 .
  7. ↑ M. Wölfelschneider: Psychoimmunological and psychoendocrinological aspects of affect processing using the example of the psychodynamic construct of alexithymia. University of Giessen 2009. (Dissertation)
  8. ↑ O. Decker: The prosthesis god. Subjectivity and Transplant Medicine. Dissertation . University of Kassel 2002.
  9. ↑ Michael Abele, Andres Ceballos-Baumann: Movement disorders . Georg Thieme Verlag, 2005, ISBN 3-13-102392-9 , p. 176 ff . ( books.google.com ).