The Concept of Alexithymia

Abstract

The concept of alexithymia, which means “no words for emotions”, emerged in order to explain the symptoms of psychosomatic patients and gained a quick recognition among psychiatrists. However, current studies indicate that alexithymia may be a personality trait seen both in different pathological groups and even in healthy population. At this point, many researches have been made in order to distinguish alexithymia from existing constructs and diagnosis, and to remove the questions on reliability and validity of the con-cept and its measurement. Ongoing discussions on alexithymia will be re-viewed in this study. The controversial concept of alexithymia will be exam-ined in terms of characteristics, theoretical background, relationship with the other disorders, measurement and the critique of the measurement and the concept.

Keywords

• Alexithymia
• pathology
• neurophysiology
• psychoanalysis