Alexithymia
noun ·Rare ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 A deficiency in understanding, processing, or describing emotions. uncountable
"Finally, schizophrenic disorders involve impairments of perceptions, including hallucinations and delusions, symptoms that often impair patients’ social and occupational functioning and can create alexithymia (Maggini and Raballo 2004; van ‛t Wout et al. 2007), an inability to recognize one’s own feelings."
Example
More examples"Finally, schizophrenic disorders involve impairments of perceptions, including hallucinations and delusions, symptoms that often impair patients’ social and occupational functioning and can create alexithymia (Maggini and Raballo 2004; van ‛t Wout et al. 2007), an inability to recognize one’s own feelings."
Etymology
From a- + lexi + -thymia. Created by psychiatrists John Case Nemiah and Peter Sifneos from Ancient Greek ἀ- (a-, “not”) + λέξις (léxis, “speaking”) + θυμός (thumós, “heart”), meaning “without words for emotions”.
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.