I hadn't heard of it and I went and checked the BPS textbook which made no mention of it so that was a bit of a bad start.

Had a quick look around through the BPS site and a couple of mentions cropped up but overall there wasn't a whole lot going.

It did mention a study though so I went and found that
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/228364294_Gender_Differences_in

Couple of things that cropped up seemed fairly positive though, prognosis wise, in that it appears to be treatable with CBT adaptations/emotional awareness training etc.

The general impression I got was that it's a systematic problem for men raised without proper emotional support(*?) that they are then less able to/unable to properly engage with those around them outside of being a MAN who does MAN things >>>> Alcohol comes in to fill the void and voila.

*Support might not be the right word, but training seems a bit too formal for child rearing so eh.

It's an interesting one though, giving a bit more depth to the statistic of why so many blokes don't bother with psychological therapies until they hit rock bottom/end it all is always a good thing.

Quote from: Mr. Psychologist on April 13, 2016, 01:29:44 PM

Couple of things that cropped up seemed fairly positive though, prognosis wise, in that it appears to be treatable with CBT adaptations/emotional awareness training etc.

Apparently it's correlated with some personality disorders. I'm sticking my neck into an area I don't understand, but it feels like this could go some way to explaining how disorders like BPD are on a spectrum, with only mildly alexithymiatic people not qualifying for a 'serious' diagnosis but still exhibiting symptoms like fleeting emotions or a lack of identity.

In terms of treatment, this book is cited on the wikipedia page: "Disorders of Affect Regulation: Alexithymia in Medical and Psychiatric Illness". Apparently, the emotional deficits involved in alexithymia makes people incredibly unresponsive to psychotherapy and entering such therapy can exacerbate problems like substance abuse. That said, a cursory read makes it look as if people can be differentiated into those who have it due to unfortunate circumstances, and those who have it as a stable personality trait.

Perhaps those afflicted by poor circumstances are the ones most helped by therapy, whereas those who have it as a stable personality trait do not. Is there any basis for something like that in the psychology literature? Like, situation-driven depression vs. endogenous depression and how easily each responds to treatment?

Hmm, it could work like that but the thing with situation vs endogenous depression is that both can be equally hard/easy to treat, it just depends on what is available.

Situational depression can be resolved by extricating a person from what is making them depressed, which doesn't come too easily in most situations hence the depression (Feeling of being trapped/no escape) and endogenous can either be resolved with medication quite rapidly or it's resistant in which case it can be a real bitch to treat.

For PDs, there has been for the longest time a consensus of 'well shit' because a lot of the typical therapies straight up don't work and medication isn't the right sort of treatment at all. But there has been some headway kind of recently with dialectical behavioural therapy, which apparently works even with BPD (a bloody miracle tbqh).

The BPD spectrum hypothesis is more to do with explaining the similarity of borderlines with bipolars, but it's not quite a proven one and it's a bit dicey to try and link the two imo. I'm not opposed to the idea, it's just not got enough weight behind it at the moment.

For alexithymia, if the worst case is that there is no cure, it is still likely that you can ameliorate the severity of it with emotional awareness. If a person doesn't feel empathy (properly) to garner an understanding of someone else's mind, then teaching them to recognise the objective signs and measures of emotional states might be helpful for improving human interactions.

A bit like microexpression training but less about the little twitches and more about the general recognition and understanding of emotions as a concept, even if they are apparently devoid/deficient.

That being said, if it's more like autism and get ready for this one which is currently hypothesized to be an extremely male brain (I'll follow up with more detail about the neurology of it if you'd like but this is already a bit cumbersome) then the prognosis of getting someone to be able to recognise emotional states is a bit less optimistic. AND THEN to add to all the fun, there is a ted talk that i'll try to find that actually says 'shut the fuck up you pessimistic motherfuckers' towards the deterministic outlook of autism development and suggests that you can actually nip it in the bud somewhat and avoid the kind of crippling autism in favour of a much more mild/high functioning standard.