Abstract (eng)
Theory: The present study investigated the effectiveness of a multimodal therapy on the recognition and processing of emotions at patients with affective, anxiety, or somatoform disorders. In particular, the influence of gender, alexithymia, attachment as well as the accuracy of recognizing discrete emotions was examined.
Methods: The total sample consisted of 54 in-patients (63% females; 25 affecti-ve, 23 anxiety and 6 somatoform patients) of the Psychosomatisches Zentrum Wald-viertel. 28 (52.8%) patients were classified as scoring low in alexithymia (NA) and 25 (47.2%) patients as scoring high in alexithymia (HA). The International Affective Picture System (IAPS; Lang, Bradley, & Cuthbert, 2008) was used to evaluate the recognition and processing of emotions.
Results: The results showed a correlation between alexithymia and attachment-related anxiety (BANG; r = .771) of the ECR-R (Ehrenthal, Dinger, Lamla, Funken, & Schauenburg, 2009), but no significant influence of insecure attachment on emotion recognition. Gender effects in the evaluation of pleasant and unpleasant pictures as well as an influence of alexithymia on ratings of dominance and on the accuracy of recognizing discrete emotions within men were found. The results indicated that the treatment programm improved the recognition of discrete emotions and led to higher dominance ratings in emotional pictures. In addition, alexithymia and symptomatology declined during the therapy.