Il sexual pleasure, as well as flooding our body with emotions, it comes from the awareness of one's body and the satisfaction of one's needs and appetites.
A pleasure that seems obvious and within everyone's reach, but it is not so; in fact, the pleasure derived from sexual intercourse or from auto-eroticism constitutes for some people a real utopia: this is the case of subjects alexithymics.
What is alexithymia?
A brief historical outline to facilitate understanding and brush up on some notion. The term alexithymia was coined by Peter Sifneos (1973) in the first half of the 70s to indicate an affective-cognitive disorder related to a particular difficulty in living, identifying and communicating emotions (from the Greek alpha = absence, lexis = language, thymus = emotions, ie “absence of words for emotions”).
The construct was developed starting from the observation of patients with the "classic" psychosomatic diseases and for many years it was considered almost a synonym of them since it was thought to be specifically connected to psychosomatic pathologies. Among the clinical features of psychosomatic patients, Sifneos included:
- the marked difficulty in describing emotions and being aware of them;
- the reduction of mental activities connected with fantasy;
- the marked concern with concrete and detailed aspects of the external environment and of one's own body;
- a style of thinking frozen on stimuli and unable to go further in elaboration (Taylor, 1977; 1984).
Alexithymia therefore consists of one dysregulation of emotions which involves in the person an inability or difficulty to identify and communicate their emotions and to resonate with those of others.
This condition affects communication and relationship with others, producing one disconnection which affects body, emotions and intimacy. We speak of a difficulty that before being erotic is of an affective and emotional nature. Among the various aspects of this condition, I intend to focus precisely on this last front.
An emotional and affective anesthesia that causes a whole series of psychosomatic symptoms, which reverberates and conditions one's sexuality.
These people appear apathetic, cold and disinterested in sex when in reality they are unable to consciously experience emotions on a body level.
"Alexithymia represents a disconnection between body and psyche that invalidates one's sensory experience and makes the person unable to consciously live one's emotions and sexuality".
The alexithymic subject, as he is unable to understand what his desires are and to enjoy his emotions, does not derive pleasure from sexual intercourse and therefore refuses it or relegates it to a simple conjugal duty.
Alexithymics have reported that during sexual intercourse, instead of focusing on the experience and emotional experiences that it entails, they become estranged and think about something else. This prevents the person from elaborating the subjective aspect of the experience and consequently makes it impossible to derive pleasure from the sexual stimulus itself. If the sexual stimulus is neither perceived nor recognized as a source of pleasure, it is not sought.
Every impulse towards oneself and the other is repressed since the prospect of pleasure is absent and everything remains focused on duty. This, together with a practically non-existent erotic imagery, inhibits the sexual response, thus favoring the establishment of a series of sexual dysfunctions such as premature ejaculation e delayed, erectile dysfunction, desire disorder, anorgasmia.
How does all this affect the couple?
This disorder has strong repercussions on the couple so much that the alexithymic subject arrives at the therapeutic consultation not by his own choice, but because he is dragged by a partner exasperated by the impossibility of an emotional exchange and the absence of sharing. A tacit and unmotivated refusal undergone that stimulates in the partner feelings of impotence, discouragement e anger: from this derives a progressive distancing from the sexualized role of husband / wife or cohabitant and in its place that of Care Giver, on whom the alexithmic is strongly dependent, makes its way. In future articles I will deal with further aspects of this extremely fascinating and dramatic condition.
