Page "Alexithymia" Paragraph 13

According to Henry Krystal, individuals suffering from alexithymia think in an operative way and may appear to be superadjusted to reality.

In psychotherapy, however, a cognitive disturbance becomes apparent as patients tend to recount trivial, chronologically ordered actions, reactions, and events of daily life with monotonous detail.

In general, these individuals lack imagination, intuition, empathy, and drive-fulfillment fantasy, especially in relation to objects.

Instead, they seem oriented toward things and even treat themselves as robots.

These problems seriously limit their responsiveness to psychoanalytic psychotherapy ; psychosomatic illness or substance abuse is frequently exacerbated should these individuals enter psychotherapy.