Whats wrong with the alexithymic imagination?
The imagination normally utilizes both the conceptual and affective systems by uniting them in a quasi-perceptual mental image. Alexithymics seem to lack the affective contribution to these mental images. Their imagined scenarios are generally devoid of emotional content. The same holds true for images reconstructed from memory. Hence they have an impaired fantasy life and inferior emotional memory. If an alexithymic imagines a situation that would be typically exciting or motivating (e.g. a foreign holiday) the prospect seems bland. The factual information is all there, and the visualisation may be accurate, but the images have no personal or motivational significance. Similarly, some alexithymics report problems with emotional memories, especially childhood memories. Normal people have a kind of emotional index of memories (the so-called ‘flashbulb’ memory) which takes a snapshot of perceptual information at times of high emotion. It appears that alexithymics either have difficulties
