Abstract
This study examined whether personality disorders (PDs) are associated with alexithymic features at varying levels of comorbid psychopathology distress. 167 psychiatric outpatients completed the Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS) and the General Severity Index (GSI) of the SCL90-revised. Bootstrapping analyses were performed to test whether the PD/alexithymia relationship was moderated by psychopathology distress (GSI). The overall number of PD criteria was associated with cognitive aspects of alexithymia (i.e., Externally Oriented Thinking, EOT) only at low/moderate levels of distress. Borderline criteria predicted EOT only when distress was low, while avoidant and dependent criteria were independently related with EOT. No association was found between other PDs and alexithymia facets. Thus, within clinical samples the alexithymia/PD association is mainly explained by comorbid psychopathology; however, individuals with avoidant, dependent and borderline features might have a specific difficulty with focusing on internal reality, even when their current symptom distress is low.
Highlights
Alexithymia refers to an altered processing of emotions that results in difficulty identifying/communicating one’s own feelings and in a concrete style of relating to others (Taylor, Bagby, & Parker, 1997)
We evaluated whether personality disorders (PDs) features interacted with current psychopathology severity (GSI) in predicting Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS) scores using Hayes’ (2013) bootstrapping procedure for conditional effects (SPSS-PROCESS macro, Model #1)
Since these results were not consistent with previous findings that alexithymia is connected with borderline personality disorder (BPD) or BPD traits (Domes et al, 2011; Joyce et al, 2013; New et al, 2012), we examined whether any individual Cluster B PD separately predicted TAS ratings
Summary
Alexithymia refers to an altered processing of emotions that results in difficulty identifying/communicating one’s own feelings and in a concrete style of relating to others (Taylor, Bagby, & Parker, 1997). These affective (i.e., impaired emotional awareness and expression) and cognitive (i.e., externally oriented thinking) components of alexithymia prevent from understanding and representing the affects and mental states of both the self and the other, thereby interfering with successful mentalization (Choi-Kain & Gunderson, 2008; Di Maggio et al, 2013; Grynberg, Luminet, Corneille, Grèzes, & Berthoz, 2010; Moriguchi et al, 2007; Taylor et al, 1997).
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