Alexithymia and Irony Comprehension and their Relations with Depression, Anxiety, General Symptomatology and Personality Disorders: A Comparison Between Clinical and Non-Clinical Participants

Abstract

Poor awareness of one's own emotions and theory of mind appears to be a feature of many adult psychiatric conditions. In this study, we explored whether alexithymia and poor understanding of irony, both elements of the metacognitive system, were impaired in a clinical sample (n = 20) when compared to a non-clinical group (n = 35). We expected that both elements were impaired in the clinical group and explored whether they were correlated with personality disorder traits, global symptomatology, depression and anxiety. Finally, we sought to investigate whether alexithymia and difficulties in irony comprehension were related to each other. Results partially supported our hypotheses. Both emotional awareness and irony comprehension were impaired in the clinical vs. non-clinical sample. Alexithymia was related to personality disorder

On the Assessment of Emotions and Emotional Competencies

“…Moreover, there has been a longstanding interest in emotions in the applied domains, especially in clinical psychology. Several psychotherapeutic approaches explicitly pay attention to how affect is regulated and how changes in affect-regulation can be brought about (e.g., Fonagy, Gergely, Jurist, & Target, 2002;Koole, 2009), and more globally, emotional distress is frequently seen as a key indicator of mental disorder (e.g., Cooper, 2005). Since the popularizing book on emotional intelligence by Daniel Goleman (1995), emotional functioning and the competence to deal with emotions has penetrated other applied domains of psychology, like for instance in leadership research (e.g.…”

“…The second paper (Dimaggio et al, 2012) addresses the question of how alexithymia relates to broader problems at the level of theory of mind (Brüne, 2005). Positive evidence is found for lack of understanding of irony in patients that are high in alexithymia, thereby offering evidence for a broader meta-cognitive problems underpinning affective disorders.…”

A New Test for Irony Detection: The Influence of Schizotypal, Borderline, and Autistic Personality Traits

“…There is extensive rumor and anecdotes among clinicians that borderline personality patients exhibit a misinterpretation of ironic intentions. Moreover, there is some evidence of impaired irony comprehension in borderline personality disorder (43). This highlights not only the necessity to elucidate whether other personality traits may also be associated with irony detection accuracy in a similar or even more robust way (44), but also which role ToM plays beyond or within those personality traits.…”