ABSTRACT
A substantial number of psychiatric patients have dif®culty grasping what is going on in their own minds and bodies. In emotionally arousing situations, affects overwhelm them and challenge their subjective integrity. Affective experiences burden them with intense but vague sensations of unease that give rise to dysfunctional and often destructive reactions, ranging from intense panic to numbness, and from violent outbursts of anger to avoidant behaviour. A frequently used concept for characterizing these problems in metacognitive monitoring is alexithymia.
