The vocalization of painful affect

Abstract

The act of verbalizing painful emotion is a sign of positive adaptive functioning, related to improved clinical state in depressed patients, and to capacity for self-regulation in persons experiencing stressful life events. In this investigation, the quality of articulation of emotion is assessed using a technique of discourse analysis applied to five-minute speech samples produced by severely depressed psychiatric inpatients and elderly medical outpatients. The method yields affect articulation profiles that trace sequential patterns of affect expression in spontaneous speech. The positive impact of the verbalizing process is based on the operation of the referential activity function, which involves integration of speech with cognitive and motoric processes. A model is proposed in which a linguistic or cognitive drive associated with referential activity, a “need for names,” operates as a positive force, in opposition to a potentially maladaptive mechanism of avoidance of negative affect by blocking the experience to symbol link.