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This book is the most recent product of at least fifteen years of research by the Toronto “Alexithymia team” led by Graeme Taylor, following his 1987 book, Psychosomatic Medicine and Contemporary Psychoanalysis. But the focus of the book reviewed here
is much broader and is enlightened by the fascinating development of affective neurosciences (Panksepp 1988). The concept of alexithymia, closely linked with the pensée opératoire of the French psychoanalysts Marty and de M'Uzan (1963), was coined by Sifneos (1973) and Nemiah (1970) and has been studied in depth by Taylor and his associates ever since. They attempt here to show how some of the theoretical models and research provide new clinical perspectives, not only on the relationship of psychosomatics and psychoanalysis, but on emotional regulation at large and its role in both medical and psychiatric illnesses.
Alexithymia is a defence style that includes “the absence of normal affect and object representation, an absence of wish-fulfilling dreams and a tendency to enact, rather than remember early affective experiences, which are encoded as sensorimotor schemata and organized on a preconceptual level.” It is part of a group of immature defences.
In the neurobiology of alexithymia, research has found that while alexithymia may be associated with dysfunction of the right cerebral hemisphere, it is unclear whether the emotional processes affected are a direct result of a deficit of the right hemisphere or a result of subsequent factors. It is possible that right-hemisphere dysfunction affects the normal communication between the two hemispheres, and that alexithymia is a consequence of a deficiency in inter-hemispheric communication and poor coordination of the functions performed by the two hemispheres. Alexithymic patients “show deficits not only in the capacity to regulate affects by way of mature ego defences, but also in the capacity to mythicize primitive affects and drives into dreams or fantasies.” Deprived