Alexithymia and the Split Brain

Abstract

A structural explanation of psychosomatic personality structure is proposed, that of a functional or physical deconnection of the two cerebral hemispheres. If the affective and symbolic energies of the right hemisphere cannot be externalized through verbal expressions of the left hemisphere (alexithymia), then they are apt to be directed inward, thereby contributing to psychosomatic personality structure. In an experiment, 8 cerebral commissurotomy patients and 8 precision-matched normal control subjects were shown a 3-minute videotaped film symbolically depicting the deaths of a baby and a boy. Gottschalk-Gleser content analysis of the subjects’ verbal responses to the film was carried out for anxiety and hostility scales. A complex of shame and total anxiety in combination with hostility directed both inward and outward, was interpreted as an indicator of ‘psychosomatic personality structure’. Cerebral commissurotomy patients showed a significantly higher level of psychosomatic personality structure than did normal controls.