The term lexithymia describes a dimensional personality trait characterised, at the high end, by an extreme and potentially problematic tendency to think about one’s own emotional state and to describe these states to others … Lexithymic patients often do not respond well to, and may grow frustrated by, traditional somatotherapies (see ‘Somatotherapy with the Garrulous Patient’, Rolyat, 1980). Although local epidemiological studies suggest that high levels of lexithymia are relatively rare, there are some intriguing cultural variations. Mounting evidence suggests that lexithymia is much more common in so-called ‘WEIRD [Western, educated, industrialised, rich and democratic] people’, who tend to live in societies where an independent model of self-construal predominates … Rather than aiming to treat lexithymia, WEIRD societies have developed many indigenous approaches that encourage patients with various health problems to talk at great length about their feelings.
Quoting a paper by Yulia E. Chentsova-Dutton, Elitsa Dermendzhiyska writes in Aeon on the subject of emotions: is there a set of innate and universal basic emotions, as one prevalent anglophone model would have it? Or would that be WEIRD?