ABSTRACT
The preceding chapter gives us considerable hope that in the foreseeable future we will have instruments available that will help us to estimate the nature and severity of alexithymic problems. Once we can establish tests for the affective function that can be used in conjunction with the currently described ones that check the cognitive disturbance, it may be possible to distinguish the cases of regression in affect from those representing an arrest in development. The use of such tests in considering a potential candidate for psychoanalytic psychotherapy should prevent a good deal of disappointment. In chapter 13 I referred to the work of two psychologists {Thompson, 1981, and Hering, 1987) who have been studying the level of maturity of affects with particular reference to the self-recognition of feelings. Lane and Schwartz (1987) have approached the question of emotional awareness from the point of view of the Piagetan levels of cognitive development. By combining this basic orientation with the observations of other investigators, they demonstrated that the levels of cognitive structural transformation determined the manner of experiencing and determining the experience of oneself and of our world. Lane and Schwartz organized a scheme of emotional development corresponding to six levels of cognitive development. They presented these levels of development in the following way: 1) On the first level of emotional awareness—during sensorimotor reflexive awareness—only body sensations are registered. 2) In the sensorimotor enactive stage, there is an awareness of the body in action, and affects are reflected in action tendencies based on global and all-consuming states of pleasure or distress. 3) In the preoperational level of cognitive development, there is an awareness of individual feelings. 4) In the concrete operational level of cognitive function, Lane and Schwartz found evidence of an awareness of blends of feelings. 5) In the formal operational cognitive level, they found a full expansion of awareness of a multitude of blends of feelings.
