ABSTRACT
Fibromyalgia is a chronic pain disorder characterized by widespread muscular and skeletal pain. Among the possible causes of this disorder are recurrent episodes of emotional trauma and psychological distress. Alexithymia may best be conceived of as a disorder of affect regulation reflecting deficits in the cognitive and interpersonal regulation of emotions. From a developmental psychoanalytic perspective, the capacity for affect regulation emerges from the infant–caregiver interaction. While the parent acts to remedy the child’s homeostatic imbalance, as described by Kohut, deficiencies in the early parent–child relationship may restrict the child’s development of self-regulatory functions. This conceptualization is shared by attachment theory, which proposes that disruption of attachment bonds in infancy may lead to a self-regulatory failure and an impaired autonomic homeostasis. Deficits in early object relationships may thus put people at risk of becoming illness-prone and exhibiting developmental arrest, particularly as manifest in a poor quality of self and object representations.
