Cultured Emotions: A Conceptual History of Alexithymia (CULTEMO)
The aim of CULTEMO is to explore the blind spots of influential psychiatric ideas that have shaped the way we understand human nature and emotions. CULTEMO combines philosophical inquiry with historical study and methods from the medical humanities to improve clinical practices.
Since the 1970s, researchers have developed the concept of alexithymia to describe individuals who lack words (lexis) to communicate emotions (thymos). Through a philosophical investigation of the history and continued use of alexithymia, the project asks how the idea of knowing one’s emotions became the benchmark for mental health.
Recent evidence from the affective sciences and cross-cultural studies demonstrates that there is great variation in how human beings make sense of bodily sentience across languages, cultures, and among individuals, suggesting we should be skeptical of emotional certainty as a universal norm of emotional health. CULTEMO will examine how this view of emotional health may inadvertently marginalize individuals who do not conform to it. The findings will be used to improve clinical practice and our understanding of emotions.
Ditte Marie Munch-Jurisic
The primary objective of WP1 is to investigate how the concept of alexithymia was established in the early 1970s by studying the work of psychiatrist Peter Sifneos, who coined the term. Analytically, Munch-Jurisic will draw on perspectives from social epistemology to focus on the epistemic power dynamics in Sifneos’ assessments of his patients (Fricker 2007). How did Sifneos come to the conclusion that his patients did not have the adequate hermeneutic resources to identify and express their emotions? (Sifneos 1973; Nemiah and Sifneos 1970). Is it possible to restore the perspective of these first patients to better understand potential blind spots inherent in the construct of alexithymia? Concurrently, the broader aim of WP1 is to historize the conception of a normal emotional life, which emerges and crystalizes at this point in the history of Western psychology. Around this time, the psy-sciences were developing a new concept of a global, universal psyche to break with the past perspectives of colonial psychology (Antić 2022). But the foundation for this new universal psyche continued to be based on Western subjects (Henrich, Heine, and Norenzayan 2010). To what extent did the alexithymia concept inherit such methodological and theoretical blind spots and what implications does this have for contemporary research on alexithymia?
The work package combines research stays at The Interdisciplinary Affective Science Laboratory, Northeastern University with archival work.
Ditte Munch-Jurisic
WP2 sets out to evaluate the philosophical assumptions behind the very idea that people can be alexithymic. The hypothesis is that a substantial part of the research done on alexithymia rests on popular ontological and epistemic assumptions of emotions as hard-wired, universal, and objective, assumptions not supported by the available evidence (Lindquist et al. 2012; Barrett 2017; Hoemann et al. 2020; Mesquita 2024). To test this hypothesis, Munch-Jurisic will build on the findings from WP1 and conduct an extensive literature review of the current literature on alexithymia. Munch-Jurisic will also collaborate closely with Professors Katie Hoemann (Kansas) and Lisa Feldman Barrett (Interdisciplinary Affective Science Laboratory, Northeastern), who are two of the main architects behind new research that argues for emotion categories as situated, historical kinds. From these perspectives, the alexithymia construct represents a culturally specific, historically situated perspective on how human beings make sense of their bodily sentience. By projecting this culturally specific perspective as the universal, natural norm for all human beings, the alexithymia construct risk marginalizing and even pathologizing the wide range of diverse ways that human beings make sense of the world. To counter this risk, the WP will develop existing critiques of traditional realist theories of emotions by drawing on perspectives from philosophers Hannah Arendt and Ludwig Wittgenstein to argue that it is normal, and even ethically beneficial, to be in doubt about our feelings (Goldie 2012, Kurth 2018, Munch-Jurisic 2023).
Astrid Oredsson
The aim of WP3 is to explore if alexithymia and related concepts can have harmful effects on those whose experience of emotions deviates from social and cultural norms. Oredsson will probe the relationship between alexithymia and marginalization in current psychiatric research and practice through the philosophical framework of affective injustice (Srinivasan 2018; Archer and Mills 2019; Lavallee and Gagné-Julien 2024). The emerging concept of affective injustice provides a promising analytical frame for this task because of its core focus on how our emotion norms and practices may be embedded in social conditions of injustice (Stockdale 2023; Chapman and Carel 2022; Fellowes 2021).
Focusing on Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD), both linked to a high prevalence of alexithymia, Oredsson will analyze diagnostic manuals, ongoing psychiatric research, treatment guidelines, and patient memoirs. While symptoms for BPD and ASD differ significantly, both diagnoses involve “abnormal affect”—BPD diagnostic criteria include “affective instability” and “inappropriate, intense anger”, whereas ASD involves “unusual moods” along with a reduced sharing of emotions or affect (APA 2013; CDC 2024). To bolster the conceptual dimensions in her research, Oredsson will spend at least four months as a visiting researcher at University of Cambridge and University of Glasgow with philosophers specialized in the study of emotion and psychiatry (Prof. Michael Brady and Asso. Prof. Jessie Munton).
Ditte Munch-Jurisic and Astrid Fly Oredsson
CULTEMO’s working hypothesis is that an understanding of emotions as culturally and historically situated may help clinicians practice epistemic curiosity and humility (Medina 2013) in encounters with patients who do not operate with the same kinds of emotion scripts or norms as themselves, minorities especially. Building on the project’s findings (WP1-3), Oredsson, student assistants and the PI will produce educational material for health practitioners and offer lectures and workshops aimed at the regional Psychiatric Information Centers (PsykInfo) and the Danish Science Festival.
To ensure uptake, deployment, and applicability for clinicians and the broader public, the material will be developed in collaboration with Ana Vedelsby (ONE OF US) who has extensive experience with disseminating research about mental health. Before dissemination, the materials will be tested and discussed in workshops with user-panels consisting of both clinicians and people with lived experiences of mental illness (from ONE OF US and CULTMIND’s partner, Competence Centre for Transcultural Psychiatry).
- Professor Lisa Bortolotti, University of Birmingham
- Professor Luna Dolezal, University of Exeter
- Program manager Anja Karre Vedelsby, ONE OF US – Denmark’s anti-stigma program
Researchers
| Name | Title | Phone | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Antic, Ana | Professor | +4535330754 | |
| Munch-Jurisic, Ditte Marie | Associate Professor | ||
| Oredsson, Astrid Fly | PhD Fellow |
Funding
Funded by a Sapere Aude-Starting Grant, Independent Research Fund Denmark and a Global Fellowship from Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA), Horizon Europe.
Project period: 1 September 2025 - 31 March 2030