Alexithymia

Alexithymia

This term was requested by a student and is a term we are not very familiar with. As a result, we searched for a definition and found the following…we hope you find it useful: “Sifneos (1972) coined the term alexithymia to designate a group of cognitive and affective characteristics typical of many patients with psychosomatic illnesses. It is thought to be a personality trait that is characterized by a decreased ability to communicate feelings, a decreased ability to identify feelings, a cognitive tendency toward detail and external operations or events, and a paucity of imaginative thought, dream recall, or fantasy” (Taylor, 1994).