Psychosomatics 1996; 37:451-458
Copyright © 1996 by Academy of Psychosomatic Medicine
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ORIGINAL RESEARCH REPORTS |
Independency of alexithymia and somatization. A factor analytic study
M Bach, D Bach and M de Zwaan
Department of Psychiatry, University of Vienna, Austria.
In discussions on the several methodological limitations in the assessment
of alexithymia, uncertainty still remains about whether alexithymia and
somatization are distinct constructs or whether they share overlapping
symptomatology and constructs, as suggested by previous studies. In this
study, 379 normal adults completed the newly developed 20-item Toronto
Alexithymia Scale (TAS-20) and a screening list for DSM-III-R somatization
disorder. Items from both the TAS-20 and the somatization checklist were
subjected to factor analysis, resulting in separate factor loadings
according to these two scales. These results were replicated and
cross-validated in a sample of 125 psychosomatic inpatients, supporting the
view of an independency between alexithymia and somatization.
