Alexithymia and the ability to provide different types of social support

Abstract

Results of flight empirical research of correlation of alexithymia and ability to ren¬dering different types of social support to other people are presented in the article. We studied the perceived social support and the given social support including the following types was allocated: emotional, instrumental, formal and reflexiveactive. 38 people aged from 30 till 50 years never addressing to the psychiatrist were examined. Three tests were given to examinees: Toronto Alexithymia Scale (D.B. Eresko's adaptation), Questionnaire of social support of G. Sommer and T. Fydrich (A.B. Kholmogorova, G.A. Petrova 's adaptation,) and projective test of strategy of consolation (F.E. Vasilyuk, E.V. Sheryagina). Different types of correlation between the level of an alexithymia and indicators of the perceived and given social support are revealed. The inverse correlation between indicators of alex¬ithymia and indicators of the perceived social support, and also indicators of abili¬ty to rendering emotional support is found. Also we've found the direct correlation between indicators of alexithymia and indicators of readiness to give instrumental social support to other people.

Keywords

• alexithymia
• the perceived social support
• the given support
• instrumen¬tal support
• emotional support
• formal support
• reflexive¬active support