Impact of Severe Childhood Sexual Abuse on the Development of Alexithymia in Adulthood

Cognitive and Affective Dimensions of Difficulties in Emotional Functioning in Somatoform Disorders and Borderline Personality Disorder

“…These results are not in line with earlier research findings in which BPD+SoD was reported to involve more complex psychopathology and significant severe dysfunctional affect regulation [35,36] than BPD alone. As BPD and BPD+SoD have been associated with childhood abuse and (complex) PTSD [17,43,44,45], these findings also call into question whether alexithymia as a unitary construct, or rather difficulties in emotional functioning from a finer-grained perspective, should be included in the sequelae of childhood abuse (neurodevelopmental deficits). Further research on complex forms of abuse-related PTSD, therefore, should examine the role of difficulties in emotional functioning (or lack thereof) using measures such as the BVAQ which provide a more fine-grained description of alexithymia than simply a single global score.…”

“…Alexithymia may provide a basis for the difficulties in emotional functioning in mental disorders [15,16,17]. Among the various difficulties-in-emotional-functioning research traditions, the study of alexithymia has the longest history [18].…”

Gender Differences in the Impact of Child Sexual Abuse on Alexithymia, Dissociation and Self

“…From research data evidence exists for the idea that psycho-traumata can indeed induce alexithymia (Hyer et al, 1990;Thomas et al, 1992;Berenbaum & James, 1994;Zlotnick, et al, 2001;Frewen et al, 2008). Victims of both rape (Zeitlin et al, 1993) and CSA (Albach & Everaerd, 1992;Berenbaum, 1996;Cloitre et al, 1997;Moormann et al, 1997;Sher & Twaite, 1999;Bermond et al, 2008) are known to suffer from alexithymia. Milder forms of CSA are not always associated with alexithymia (Paivio & McCulloch, 2004;Kooiman et al, 2004;Modestine, Furrer, & Malti, 2005).…”

Do Alexithymia, Dissociation, and CSA Explain the Controversial Topic of Memory Recovery?

“…Although several studies (Cloitre et al, 1997;Berenbaum, 1996;Sher & Twaite, 1999;Bermond et al, 2008) do support Krystal's (1988) view that CSA may cause alexithymia later in life, other investigations failed to come forward with empirical evidence for this notion (Paivio & McCulloch, 2004;Kooiman et al, 2004;Modestine et al, 2005). Many explanations are given for inconsistent findings (see Taylor & Bagby, 2004), such as the age of the children at the time of the abuse, the duration of the abuse, and whether or not the children developed PTSD.…”

“…Although it can be argued that suffering from alexithymia is a trait, primarily based on inherent malfunctions of the brain or neurobiological deficits (called primary alexithymia by Sifneos, 1988), others have reported (Berenbaum, 1996;Cloitre et al, 1997;Sher & Twaite, 1999;Bermond et al, 2008) that alexithymia can also be induced by situational factors such as massive psychological trauma in childhood or later in life (called secondary alexithymia, for descriptions see Taylor et al, 1997;and Krystal, 1988). When looking at the present alexithymia and dissociation scores it could be argued that the interaction between trait and situation components in combination with plasticity and critical periods in brain maturation has led to what has been measured with the self-report questionnaires administered in our research.…”