Alexithymia and hypersensitivity to touch and palpation.

Alexithymia appears to be directly related to the process of somatization of psychological distress that has not found verbal expression. The lack of a meaningful dialogue between mother and child in early infancy may predispose the development of an alexithymic strategy in expressing psychic and psychosocial stress. This can occur in the form of unpleasant bodily sensations or pain. The human skin is, in addition to the oral and gastrointestinal organs, the earliest contact sphere between the young infant and the environment. In a group of 312 randomly chosen patients at an outpatient primary health care clinic a significant relationship was found between palpational hypersensitivity to touch on the one hand and somatization proneness and the degree of alexithymia on the other hand.