I Alexithymia: History Validation of the Concept

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Abstract
This four-part symposium, which replaces our usual overview, derives from a panel on Alexithymia and Culture presented at the May 1986 annual meeting of the American Psychiatric Association in Washington. The perspectives of the authors are diverse: Taylor (a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst) and Catchlove (an anaesthetist who directs a pain clinic) present views generally sympathetic to the notion of alexithymia; while Prince and Kirmayer (psychiatrists with a more social and anthropological orientation) are distinctly more sceptical. It is to be hoped that these papers will stimulate comment, discussion, and research in those fundamental and controversial bor derline areas between culture and psychiatry: affect, affect expres sion, illness, psychotherapy, and ritual.