Experience of Joy and Sadness in Alexithymic Emotional Discourse

Marie-Mathilde Dupont-Leclerc,Serge Lecours

doi:10.7565/landp.v7i1.1583

Marie-Mathilde Dupont-Leclerc, Serge Lecours

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.7565/landp.v7i1.1583

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Journal: Language and Psychoanalysis	Publication Date: Jul 31, 2018
Citations: 1	License type: cc-by

Affiliation: Université de Montréal

Abstract

Alexithymia is a personality trait characterized by difficulties identifying and describing emotions. Suffering from a deficit in the cognitive processing of emotions, alexithymic individuals are unable to symbolize their emotions. Even though emotional elaboration is one of the core aspects of alexithymia, it has not been thoroughly investigated. Few studies have reported quantitative features of alexithymic’s discourse. However, the qualitative properties of alexithymic emotional discourse and the difference in symbolization between positive and negative emotions remain to be investigated. This study aims to examine how individuals with alexithymia symbolize their subjective emotional experiences by defining the characteristics of their discourse related to positive and negative emotions. A sample of 9 clinically alexithymic individuals rated on the TAS-20 was interviewed about a typical experience of joy and sadness. Data were analysed using interpretative phenomenological analysis. Themes associated with sadness revealed that alexithymic individuals tend to avoid contact with sadness. They also perceived sadness as an imposed state by external events. Themes associated with joy revealed that this emotion seemed easier to share with peers. Moreover, joy seemed easier to express and symbolize for alexithymic individuals than sadness. This comprehensive description of alexithymic emotional discourse allows to better understand the symbolization of emotions according to their valence and to better recognize alexithymic ways of expressing emotions.

Highlights

The term alexithymia was introduced by Sifneos in 1972 to frame clinical cases of psychosomatic patients who experienced significant difficulty in using language to express emotions, a dearth of fantasy life, and a lack of symbolic dreaming (Sifneos, 1994)
The results of this study provide a snapshot of the emotional discourse of highalexithymia individuals associated with sadness and joy
The present study aimed to provide a better understanding of how highalexithymia individuals describe their experiences of sadness and joy, as well as to describe the major themes found in the emotional discourse of high-alexithymia individuals

Summary

Introduction

The term alexithymia was introduced by Sifneos in 1972 to frame clinical cases of psychosomatic patients who experienced significant difficulty in using language to express emotions, a dearth of fantasy life, and a lack of symbolic dreaming (Sifneos, 1994). Language and Psychoanalysis, 2018, 7 (1), 62-83 These characteristics represent the manifestations of two main deficits. The second deficit, termed “operative thinking” (pensée opératoire), is defined by a lack of fantasy associated to a concrete cognitive style, which leads to the manifestations of the third characteristic (Bagby, Taylor, Parker & Dickens, 2005). The characteristics comprised by the construct of alexithymia are considered to reflect a deficit in the cognitive processing of emotions (Sifneos, 1994) and in the symbolic representation of emotions (Lane et al, 1996)

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