Dependency and alexithymia in psychiatric inpatients

Research has demonstrated that alexithymic persons show a kind of defensive pseudonormality on psychological tests, minimizing problems and refusing to acknowledge psychological symptoms. The present study investigated whether alexithymic individuals are also unwilling to acknowledge the presence of a personality trait that is perceived by most adults as being undesirable (i.e., dependency). A mixed-sex sample of 372 psychiatric inpatients (209 women and 163 men) was screened for level of alexithymia; they completed self-report and projective measures of dependency. As predicted, there were significant negative correlations between alexithymia scores and scores on self-report measures of dependency in subjects of both sexes, but no significant relationships between subjects' alexithymia scores and their scores on the projective dependency measures. Apparently, alexithymic and nonalexithymic persons have comparable underlying dependency needs, but alexithymic persons are unwilling to acknowledge these needs on self-report tests.