سبک دلبستگی بزرگسالان و آلکسیتیمیا

The focus of the present study was to investigate the relationship between adult attachment behaviour and alexithymia. Adult attachment behaviour and alexithymic characteristics were assessed using questionnaire methods. In a single session, 301 University students completed an Italian version of the Attachment Style Questionnaire (ASQ) and the Italian version of the 20-Item Toronto Alexithymia Scale. Moderate positive correlations were found among TAS total score and several ASQ subscales such as the Discomfort with Closeness (0.35), the Relationships as Secondary (0.38) and the Need for Approval (0.41). On the other hand, TAS total score and the Confidence subscale of the ASQ showed a moderate negative correlation (−0.45). These results provide interesting cues. Possible hypothetical explanations of this association are discussed. Further longitudinal researches are needed to better investigate the relationship between the sociocultural environment, deficiencies in mother–child relationship and the ease of confidence in intimacy in adulthood.

The aim of the present study is to investigate the relationship between adult attachment behaviour and alexithymia. Adult attachment is the stable tendency of an individual to make substantial efforts to seek and maintain proximity to and contact with one or a few specific individuals, who provide the subjective potential for physical and psychological safety and security. This stable tendency is regulated by internal working models of attachment, which are cognitive–affective–motivational schemata built from the individual's experience in his or her interpersonal world. “Attachment styles” refer to particular internal working models of attachment that determine people's behavioural responses to real or imagined separation and reunion from their attachment figures (Berman & Sperling, 1994). Attachment researchers describe the influence of early attachment experiences on the evolving internal representations of the self and others and have begun to investigate how the “internal working model” of attachment influences future relationships as well as affect regulating strategies in adulthood. There is strong suggestive evidence that the attachment style developed in childhood remains relatively stable across the life span and may even be transmitted between generations (Goldberg, 1991). Research studies (Bowby, 1969, Bretherton, 1985 and Tennant, 1988) on attachment styles in infancy and childhood have confirmed that the sensitivity and responsiveness of the primary caregiver to the child's emotional states is a major determinant of the way the child learns to regulate distressing affects and to relate to other people. Children who became securely attached experienced an optimal and consistent responsiveness expression and learned that modulated emotional expression has positive outcomes. Deficient care-giving results in insecure patterns of attachment behaviour and impedes the development of effective affect regulating skills. Studies of adolescents and adults (Hindy and Schwarz, 1994 and Rothbard and Shaver, 1994) found that those with secure attachment styles report low levels of negative affect and form strong relationships with others to whom they turn for support when emotionally distressed. Individuals with an insecure style of attachment were found to experience less positive affect than those with secure attachments, and also manifested deficits in the ability to self-regulate anxiety, depression and other negative affects (Parker, 1982). Alexithymia is a term used most commonly to describe people who have difficulties recognizing, processing and regulating emotions. Several authors (Haviland et al., 2000 and Taylor et al., 1997) suggest that Alexithymia is a personality trait that places individuals at great risk for several medical and psychiatric disorders (e.g. substance related, panic, posttraumatic stress, somatoform, and eating). A study investigating the relationship between alexithymia and DSM-III-R psychiatric syndromes and personality disorders found no significant associations between alexithymia measured by the Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS) and DSM-III-R diagnoses (Bach, de Zwaan, Ackard, Nutzinger, & Mitchell, 1994), on the other hand nevroticism, anxiety and depression are correlated with TAS scores (Deary et al., 1997 and Taylor et al., 1997). Of the large number of studies on alexithymia, many have examined the aetiology of alexithymic characteristics. The alexithymia construct is composed of the following salient features: difficulty identifying feelings and distinguishing between feelings and the bodily sensations of emotional arousal; difficulty communicating feelings to other people; constricted imagination processes, as evidenced by a paucity of fantasies; and a stimulus-bound, externally orientated cognitive style (Nemiah et al., 1976 and Taylor et al., 1991). Several theorists have posited that alexithymia is caused by events occurring in childhood, such as psychic trauma or disturbances in the mother–infant relationship. Recognition and expression of emotion have been found to be associated with family environment and history of childhood maltreatment. Berenbaum and James (1994) examined the family correlates of alexithymia. Children who grow up in environments in which they feel physically and emotionally unsafe and insecure, and in which the expression of emotion is discouraged, would not be expected to learn how to successfully cope with their emotional states, and would consequently be uncomfortable experiencing emotions. These difficulties and the lack of role models for the nonthreatening display of emotion may lead to discomfort or ambivalence in expressing feelings. Fukunishi and colleagues (Fukunishi, Sei, Morita, & Rahe, 1999) reported that in a study of college students with mother's low care, participants expressed alexithymic characteristics, in particular on the alexithymic construct named difficulty communicating feelings. The most important finding of this study is that poor parental bonding is related to the perceived difficulty in articulating feeling. Clearly, affect development and the development of cognitive skills for regulating affects are intimately related to the infant and young child's relationships with parents, in particular with mother. We suggest that alexithymia not only constitutes an inherent personality aberration but also constitutes a secondary accompaniment of trauma, and also emerges secondarily as a consequence of attachment and bonding failures. A previous study (Troisi, D'Argenio, Peracchio, & Petti, 2001) found that alexithymia was more pronounced in male participants who had patterns of insecure attachment in a sample of patients with clinically significant mood symptoms. The aim of the current study was to extend this finding by examining the relationship between adult attachment style and alexithymia in a sample of male and female university students, and to investigate the role of gender in this relationship.