Alexithymia is a psychiatric condition in which certain mental and emotional functions are disturbed, and the patients cannot identify and describe their feelings, have no fantasy life, and have a tendency to describe physical symptoms rather than the underlying emotions (Zeitlin, Lane, O'Leary and Schrift, 1989, 1434-1439). It is found in patients suffering from posttraumatic stress disorder, psychosomatic complaints, substance abusers, and also those in whom no psychiatric disorder is present. Although the physiological mechanism for the disorder has yet to be elucidated, it has been theorized that alexithymia results from a deficit in the communications between the right and left hemispheres of the brain. Since emotions are thought to originate in the right brain, and verbal skills in the left brain of most right-handed individuals, a deficit in communications would leave a person unable to express their emotions. This theory is supported by the fact that patients who have surgery to the corpus callosum connecting the two hemispheres for treatment of epilepsy have similar symptoms to alexithymia. A study looking at interhemispheric transfer involving Vietnam veterans with posttraumatic stress disorder used a tactile test requiring one hand to respond when the other hand sensed a stimulus. Poor performance indicated poor interhemispheric communication, and was found in subjects with alexithymia, but not in those without alexithymia or in normal controls, providing further evidence that alexithymia may be caused by poor interhemispheric communication.
Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) can be the result of a number of causes, one of which is childhood sexual abuse. Moormann, Bermond, Albach and van Dorp (2004). There is also evidence that psychotrauma can cause alexithymia (139). Victims of rape and holocaust survivors both suffer from alexithymia, because during traumatic events, people are confronted with overwhelmin...