People Who Can`t Link Thoughts, Emotions

December 24, 1985|By Gino Del Guercio, United Press International

When Harvard psychiatrist Peter Sifneos asked a patient how he felt about breaking up with his fiancee, the young man replied, ``Well, I`m not sure, but the weather was beautiful.``

The patient is one of many Sifneos has studied in the last 20 years who are unable to connect their thoughts with emotions. They often feel angry, happy or sad, like anyone -- but they do not know why. And they cannot tell you if they are feeling any emotion or what it might be.

They live in an emotional wasteland.

Sifneos named the syndrome alexithymia, which is Greek for ``lacks words for emotions.`` He believes the syndrome is far more common than realized and that many victims may go undiagnosed or their symptoms may be mistaken for something else.

Unable to understand and discuss their emotions or those of others makes living in a world seething with emotions, such as our own, extremely difficult for such victims.

Marriage is almost impossible. ``However, if one alexithemic marries another they tend to do very well,`` Sifneos says.

When it comes to their emotions, these people often act like animals. When they feel angry they sometimes strike out without thinking whether their anger is appropriate or not -- like a cat might scratch when it becomes angry.

That inability to relate thoughts and emotions often causes problems in the opposite direction as well. When asked to remember the death of a close friend or relative, or told about a sad situation, they do not get emotional as a normal person might.

Although very little is understood about the syndrome, Sifneos believes alexithymia can be caused by physical injury to the brain or by traumatic events that have occurred in a person`s life. For instance, when car accident victims have injured the connection between the right and left sides of their brain, they often become alexithymic.

Sifneos has found that other people may develop the syndrome after severe emotional events like being put in a concentration camp. ``If you`re in a camp and people are dying all over the place, you cannot afford the luxury of feeling sadness,`` he says. ``You learn to wear blinders. You disconnect yourself from other people.

``When survivors are now in the situation where this way of handling things is unnecessary they may attribute this to saving their life and as a result are unwilling to give it up,`` he said.

The bright side of the problem may be that it will open doors to the interconnections between psychiatry and neurology. Because the two fields are so complex, few bridges have been built between them, although in a sense they are the same.

Researchers hope that alexithymia may illuminate how chemical and electrical interactions in the brain result in what we know as thoughts and emotions.

``People have become very interested in alexithymia because of this and a great deal of work is being done,`` Sifneos said.

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