ALEXITHYMIA IN THE STRUCTURE OF “APPARENTLY HEALTHY” PERSONALITY

Abstract

The article presents the results of a study of the severity of alexithymia in the structure of apparently healthy personality, and the relationships with such personal characteristics as anxiety, aggressive and hostile reactions, and empathy. The sample is 384 participants from the age of 12 to 20 years old. Psychodiagnostic research was performed with the use of the Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS), the characterological questionnaire by Smishek, the Taylor's Manifest Anxiety Scale, the questionnaire by A. Buss and A. Dark, the empathic ability questionnaire by Yusupov I. M., the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire. The data obtained were statistically processed (determination of the reliability of differences in Student's t-criterion, correlation analysis using the Spearman rank correlation criterion, factor analysis of images). The severity of alexithymia was recorded in 42.5% of participants from the age of 12 to 15 years old and 32.9% of the participants from the age of 16 to 20 years old. The analysis of the correlations of the studied characteristics in the total sample of the participants allowed to identify three main clusters which correlate with alexithymia, and are not isolated from each other: the direct correlation between alexithymia and anxiety, the inverse correlation between alexithymia and empathic abilities and emotionally; the direct correlation between alexithymia and aggressive and hostile reactions. The factor analysis allowed to put the factorized parameters into three semantic groups: ``Anxious aggressiveness{''}, ``Hypo-empathic experiences{''}, and ``Disthymic activity{''}. However alexithymia is not a key characteristic in any of these factors, but it is present in each of the factors. Alexithymia is not a key characteristic of the personality structure of ``apparently healthy{''} participants. However, being present in the whole factor structure, it forms alexithymics environment, which brings changes into the emotional development of an individual and subsequently leads to the violation of his psychosomatic status.