Parathymia: Symptoms And Causes Of Altered Affectivity
The psychopathology of affectivity It is a specific field of psychology that encompasses the different disorders or alterations of affectivity, that is, those that are related to feelings, emotions and affects.
Today we will talk about a specific alteration: parathymia How do you explain that a person behaves in a way that is incongruent with the situation they are experiencing? Have you seen someone laugh at a funeral? What happens when these experiences turn out to be pathological? That is what parathymia is all about, and in this article we will analyze it in detail.
Emotions allow us to adapt to the world we live in, as well as our internal world. Along with them, feelings and affects constitute phenomena and tools of emotional management. These, in turn, influence our perception and our life experience.
Emotions are a channel of expression: their proper management contributes to the personal well-being of each person and predisposes them to good mental health. Their inadequate management or repression, on the other hand, can cause discomfort and psychological suffering in the person
Affective psychology encompasses these concepts. The psychopathology of affectivity, for its part, would include the alterations that occur in the emotional, affective and sentimental sphere of the person.
Psychology of affectivity
Affectivity or emotional life encompasses all those experiences that define and limit a person’s emotional life. It is a set of tendencies and states that the person experiences personally and immediately.
Affectivity influences our personality and in our behavior, especially in its expression. It is generally distributed in dichotomous poles such as pleasure/pain or joy/sadness. Therefore, as we will see, the effects of parathymia extend to many areas of life.
That said, let’s get to know the different concepts that the psychology of affectivity encompasses:
Emotions
Emotions are internal affective responses that may be accompanied by somatic symptoms and that appear in response to an experience. This experience can be internal (a thought, a sensation…) or external (an event).
Emotions maintain or end the triggering event. Some of them are fear, joy, anger…
Feelings
The feelings are the subjective experience of emotion They are longer lasting and less intense than emotions and, unlike them, they are not accompanied by somatic or vegetative symptoms. For example, love, jealousy or pride are feelings.
Mood or humor
It is the basal state of the person, of prolonged duration, stable and persistent, which accompanies life experience. Unlike the previous ones, it is established more slowly and progressively.
It is a disposition to react with a certain type of emotion to different events. It can be reactive to a situation (external or internal) or appear spontaneously. For example, it would be a sad or happy mood…
Parathymia: alterations in affectivity
There is a great variety of alterations that affect the aforementioned spheres. Are They can appear in isolation in the individual, or within a more global psychopathological picture (for example schizophrenia, mania, depression…). Within the affective and emotional sphere, we find parathymia.
The parathymia, also called discordance or ideo-affective incongruence, is the lack of relationship between what is expressed verbally and the emotional experience. That is, the subject experiences feelings that are inappropriate or incongruent for the situation he is experiencing or for the thoughts he is having.
Thus, it is a discordant reaction of affectivity: for example, showing irritation in happy situations, laugh in sad situations (for example at a funeral) or cry at a funny thought. This inadequacy may include quantitative aspects (intensity) or qualitative aspects (tone, nuance or quality).
Parathymia frequently appears in schizophrenia (especially when there are negative and defective symptoms), in organic brain disorders and in primary affective disorders (although in the latter exceptionally).
Types of parathymias
There are, in addition to the aforementioned parathymia, two more types, although with quite different meanings from the original parathymia. Is about positive parathymia and negative parathymia
Positive parathymia or joy pathology appears when the subject remains in a characteristic euphoric and hyperactive state It manifests itself in manic episodes of bipolar disorder or in organic symptoms (moria).
In negative parathymia or pathological sadness, just the opposite happens; the subject you feel especially sad or sad It appears especially in depressive episodes.
Its differences with emotional indifference
We should not confuse parathymia with another alteration of affectivity: coldness or emotional indifference. This consists of the lack or loss of the ability to present affective responses or the inability to modulate and be flexible with emotions.
People with emotional indifference appear cold, insensitive and incapable of becoming emotionally involved with other people or their actions.
Like parathymia, this alteration appears in residual schizophrenia and organic brain disorders. On the other hand, it can also manifest itself in some personality disorders.
