Article published In:
Narrative Construction of Emotional Life[Journal of Narrative and Life History 5:3] 1995
► pp. 239–245
[Journal of Narrative and Life History 5:3] 1995
► pp. 239–245
On a Certain Emotional Blindness in Human Beings
Abstract
This essay examines the conditions surrounding emotional blindness, indiffer-ence, or the syndrome that is known clinically as alexithymia. Indifference to events or circumstances is related to the narrative construction of those events, is selective within the same person, and is dependent upon a person's con-structed identity. Our capacity to story ourselves and the world about us removes our indifference. A clinical case of alexithymia and several biographical examples are employed to illustrate and fortify these points. (Social and Clinical Psychology)
Neither the whole of truth nor the whole of good is revealed to any single observer, although each observer gains a partial superiority of insight from the peculiar position in which he stands.
William James, 1900, p. 264
References (9)
Ainsworth, M. D. S. (1989). Attachments beyond infancy. American Psychologist, 441, 709–716. 
Dillard, A. (1974). Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. New York: Harper.
(1982). Teaching a stone to talk. New York: Harper & Row.
Herzfeld, M. (1992). The social production of indifference: Exploring the symbolic roots of Western bureaucracy. New York: Berg.
James, W. (1900). Talks to teachers on psychology: And to students on some of life's ideals. New York: Holt.
Jung, C. G. (1965). Memories, dreams, reflections. New York: Vintage.
Kagan, J. (1994). Galen's prophecy. New York: Basic Books.
Updike, J. (1994). The critic in winter. The New Yorker, November 29, 159–164.
Wordsworth, W. (1947). Prelude (E. deSelincourt, (Ed.)).New York: Oxford University Press. (Original work published 1805)