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Article published In: Narrative Construction of Emotional Life
[Journal of Narrative and Life History 5:3] 1995
► pp. 239–245

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On a Certain Emotional Blindness in Human Beings

 | Department of Psychology Wesleyan University
Published online: 4 August 2015
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https://doi.org/10.1075/jnlh.5.3.05cer
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
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