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... emissions of affect are, however, fixated at a childhood level and are therefore relatively undifferentiated, so that they are not readily available for thought about oneself. [Theaters of the Mind] Graeme Taylor provides a example of this behaviour in Disorders of Affect Regulation: During the early months of therapy it became evident that James struggled with a great deal of anger and rage, but usually he was unaware of such feelings until he lost control. On one occasion, he impulsively punched his fist through a wall. Exploration of this event revealed that he had been bothered a few hours earlier by pressure from a salesperson but had failed to identify his feelings; nor had he linked his impulsive outburst with this situation. [p. 246 - 247 ] Researchers Nemiah, Freyberger and Sifneos (1976) also mentioned brief but violent outbursts of affective behaviour from alexi thymic individuals: Although alexi thymic patients are inarticulate about their affect and generally give no external evidence of experiencing them, they may on occasion manifest brief but violent outbursts of affective behaviour. Patients will feel no anger in the face of aggravating circumstances, but may exhibit explosive flashes of destructive rage. A patient with hypertension, for example, gave a detailed account of a struggle with his son.
On three successive days he had calmly asked his son to remove a bag of garbage from the kitchen. Each day his request was ignored. On the evening of the third day, the patient came home from work to discover that the cat had spread this rotting food all over the floor. In a trice, without warning, he smashed the banister of the stairs leading to the second floor. This impulsive outburst was without premonitory affect or fantasy, and was accompanied only by a vague inner sense of upset that the patient could in no way define as anger or other specific affect. [Alexithymia: a view of the Psychosomatic Process 1976, p. 432 - 3 ] More recently, several studies have found significant positive correlations between the TAS or TAS- 20 and the neuroticism dimension of the five factor model of personality, suggesting that alexi thymic individuals are disposed toward emotional lability and over reactivity even though they have difficulty elaborating on their emotional experiences. 4. Exploitation of others cognitive abilities; By actively compelling the child to evaluate his / her own emotional states -e.
g. to child: "tell me why you are upset and tell me what you need"- places premature pressure on children's underdeveloped emotion-cognition and emotion-regulation abilities. Secondly, by inciting (in various ways) vicarious interpretations from the child to help the alexi thymic parent make sense of their own (the parent's) emotional confusion the child is placed in the position of having his intellectual capacity exploited and over-burdened. Object Relations writer D. W. Winnicott suggests that when placed in this situation the child has no choice but to substitute his mind for the maternal care and adaption which has not been forthcoming: Exploitation of the intellect can start very early, in premature ego awareness If we take the case of a baby whose mothers failure to adapt is too great we can find that the baby survives by means of the mind.
The mother exploits the babys power to think things out and to collate and to understand. If the baby has a good mental apparatus this thinking becomes a substitute for maternal care and adaption. The baby mothers himself by means of understanding, understanding too much. It is a case of Cogito, ergo in mea potentate sum. In the extreme the mind and the babys thinking have enabled the baby, now growing up and acquiring a developmental pattern, to do without the most important aspects of maternal care that is needed by all human beings, namely reliability and adaption to basic needs. Like whiskey ones own understanding is more reliable than the mother was.
This results in the uneasy intelligence of some whose good brains have become exploited. The intelligence is hiding a degree of deprivation. In other words, there is always for those with exploited brains a threat of a breakdown from intelligence and understanding to mental chaos or to disintegration of the personality Intelligence and thinking can be measured and used and appreciated but it is to be remembered that intelligence can be exploited and that it can hide such things as deprivation and threatened chaos. A partial breakdown is represented clinically by an obsessional organization, with disorganization always around the corner. [Psychoanalytic Explorations]. Winnicott suggests that the child whose mind has been exploited in this way leads to a pathological construction of personality in which psychosomatic health is impaired; "There is a most uncomfortable state of affairs when the psyche of the individual gets 'seduced' away into this mind from the intimate relationship which the psyche originally had with the soma. The result is a mind-psyche, which is pathological...
Breakdown threatens or occurs, because what the individual is all the time needing is to return to the dependant psyche-soma which forms the only place to live from. In this case, 'without mind' becomes a desired state... I want to make clear my point that this type of mental functioning is an encumbrance to the psyche-soma, or to the individual human being's continuity of being which constitutes a self. The individual may be able to make use of such an intellect in a carefully controlled analysis, but this cataloguing type of mental functioning acts like a foreign body if it is associated with failure of psychosomatic being. " [Through Paediatrics to Psycho-Analysis] 5. Mechanical, stimulus-bound cognitive style; The alexi thymic individual has a tendency toward concrete, mechanical, and rigid parenting behaviour similar to that of the obsessive-compulsive parenting style. Several studies have confirmed overlaps between the constructs of alexithymia and obsessive-compulsiveness.
Keltikangas-Jarvinen (1990) found significant correlations between the Beth Israel Questionnaire (BIQ) and the Lazare-Kerman-Armor-Trait-Scales (LKATS) compulsive personality traits of perseverance, rigidity, and orderliness. Bach et al. (1994 a) also found a moderate association between alexithymia (assessed with the TAS) and the trait of obsessive-compulsiveness, which was assessed with a subscale of the Revised Version of the Hopkins Symptom Checklist 90 (SCL- 90 R; Derogatis, 1977), in a group of 45 Austrian psychiatric inpatients with functional somatic symptoms. Bach and colleagues (1994 a) accounted for this finding by noting the similarities in the restricted affective structure and the rigid, externally oriented cognitive structure between alexi thymic and obsessive subjects. [Disorders of Affect Regulation, p. 70 - 71 ]. Typical obsessive-compulsive traits include: preoccupation with orderliness, perfectionism, and mental and interpersonal control; feelings of excessive doubt and caution; preoccupation with details, rules, lists, order, organization or schedule; perfectionism that interferes with task completion; excessive conscientiousness, scrupulousness, and undue preoccupation with productivity to the exclusion of pleasure and interpersonal relationships; excessive pedantry and adherence to social conventions; rigidity and stubbornness; unreasonable insistence by the patient that others submit to exactly his or her way of doing things, or unreasonable reluctance to allow others to do things; restricted expression of affection; intrusion of insistent and unwelcome thoughts or impulses; Inflexible about matters of morality, ethics, or values; adopts a miserly spending style toward both self and others; money is viewed as something to be hoarded for future catastrophes; shows rigidity and stubbornness. Because the alexi thymic individual shares many obsessive-compulsive traits we might take as applicable to the children of alexi thymic parents the following statement about obsessive-compulsive parents by Theodore Million: "Children of over controlling parents become experts in learning what they must not do, so as to avoid punishment and condemnation. These children learn to heed parental restrictions and rules; for them, the lines of disapproved behaviors are set rigidly.
However, as a consequence of experiencing mostly negative injunctions, they have little idea of what is approved. They know well what they must not do but do not know so well what they can do. Positive achievements often are "taken for granted" and only occasionally acknowledged by their parents; comments and judgments are almost exclusively limited to pointing out infractions of rules and boundaries the child must never transgress. " [Disorders of Personality] In the words of a self-described alexi thymic mother: Just lately I have noticed that my children often do as their dad asks of them, but feel pressured to do the things I ask of them. The discrepancy is due to the cold hard orders that I dish out. Whereas their dad first creates a report between himself and the children (just a sentence or two), and then asks them to do whatever it is, I just see that something needs to be done and don't focus on the child, but the chore itself. I find it hard to remember that children are sensitive and need to be approached in such a way. [From the Alexithymia Chatsite] Summary These five factors alone are considerable enough to promote serious and potentially enduring psychological problems for children.
Among the short term problems the child may face intense feelings of insecurity, anxiety, fear, and emotional distresses which are compounded by the un empathic nature of the alexi thymic environment. The cumulative nature of such experiences may establish enduring psychological disturbances such as affective restriction, insecure attachment disorder, communication difficulties, overdevelopment and reliance on the mind, phobias, and obsessional behaviour. Finally, children of alexi thymic parents are also more likely than children of non-alexi thymic parents to be exposed to physical harm due to the alexi thymic parents inability to perceive emotional cues which would indicate environmental dangers or physical illness. This essay has limited its subject to the highlighting the potential problems faced by children of alexi thymic parents. It must be added that some children of alexi thymic parents may achieve good-enough psychological health due to influences from non-alexi thymic parents (if one is available), and by the child's peers. As Henry Krystal suggests, the fact some children of alexithymic's resembled their peers more than their parents in the nature of their affect maturation, fantasy formation, and affect tolerance suggests that the social element and identification with peers during latency and adolescence may account for the demonstrated cultural variation in their affect differentiation. " I would further elaborate Krystal's statement to say that it is of vital importance that these children -particularly in their pre-adolescent phases of development- have extensive contact with all non-alexi thymic support persons, but particularly with the non-alexi thymic parent if one is available to provide help and support for the emotional development of the child.
The non-alexi thymic parent would certainly be more important than 'peers' in helping such children, because emotional skills are being learnt particularly in infancy and toddler hood when peers would be of less help and be less available than the parents who are caring for the child. Certainly, without non-alexi thymic support persons the psychological future of the exclusively alexithymia-parented child may be a problematic one. Support for the alexi thymic family, where possible in the form of input from non-alexi thymic intimates is an important consideration which I submit would be welcomed by those suffering the condition. Many individuals with alexithymia are aware of operating with a personal deficit in emotion-cognition largely due to the feedback they receive from other intimates. Alexithymic individuals typically gravitate towards support persons who might help them interpret and navigate the world of emotional concerns, and so would probably be amenable to offers of support.
As one alexi thymic mother reported to me; I like the old saying that It takes a whole community to raise a child, because Im always fumbling with my own children and cant do it on my own. [Communication with the author 2000 ]. For adults who were themselves parented exclusively by alexi thymic parent / s and who have experienced (or are experiencing) difficulties in emotion-communication and relationships, some words of hope come from author Daniel Goleman who writes; There is hope in reparative relationships: relationships throughout life with friends or relatives, for example, or in psychotherapy- continually reshape your working model of relationships. An imbalance at one point can be corrected later; its an ongoing, lifelong process. Indeed, several theories of psychoanalysis see the therapeutic relationship as providing just such an emotional corrective, a reparative experience of attunement. Mirroring is the term used by some psychoanalytic thinkers for the therapists reflecting back to the client an understanding of his inner state, just as an attuned mother does with her infant. The emotional synchrony is unstated and outside conscious awareness, though a patient may bask in the sense of being deeply acknowledged and understood. [Emotional Intelligence] References Henry Krystal; Integration and Self-Healing 1988 Joyce McDougall; Theaters of The Mind 1985 (English translation) Graeme Taylor, Michael Bagby, James Parker; Disorders of Affect Regulation (1997) Daniel Goleman; Emotional Intelligence (1996) Nemiah, Freyberger and Sifneos; Alexithymia: a view of the Psychosomatic Process (1976) Donald W.
Winnicott; Psychoanalytic Explorations (1989) Donald W. Winnicott; Through Parediatrics to Psycho-Analysis (1975) Theodore Million; Disorders of Personality (2000) Sheila Jennings Linehan; Parenting Problems for Parents With Asperger's Syndrome Alexithymia Chatsite: web whats new. many Alexithymia Exchange web whats new. many
Free research essays on topics related to: emotional intelligence, psycho analysis, obsessive compulsive, obsessive, compulsive
Research essay sample on Obsessive Compulsive Emotional Intelligence
