Committee Chair

Watson, Paul J.

Department

Dept. of Psychology

College

College of Arts and Sciences

Publisher

University of Tennessee at Chattanooga

Place of Publication

Chattanooga (Tenn.)

Abstract

Anxiety, neuroticism and depression are highly studied human disturbances in the field of psychology. There are many theories as to the cause of these distresses. Followers of Albert Ellis' Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy have hypothesized that the maintaining of irrational beliefs causes emotional distress. Others have theorized that a condition known as alexithymia is responsible for emotional distresses. Literally "no words for feelings," alexithymia is a condition where individuals are unable to describe their feelings, they are unable to distinguish between their feelings and bodily sensations, and they have a tendency to overemphasize the concrete details of external events. This project was conducted to compare the two theories and to determine whether they worked together to best predict the emotional distresses, or if one theory was superior to the other. Several self-report questionnaires were administered to college students. These questionnaires included the Survey of Personal Beliefs, the MalouffSchutte Belief Scale, the Toronto Alexithymia Scale-20 (TAS - 20), the Beck Depression Inventory, the neuroticism subscale of the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire-Revised, and the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale. Multiple regression analysis demonstrated that an TAS - 20 subscale, Difficulty Identifying Feelings, was an especially important predictor of all emotional dysfunction measures. The irrational belief constructs were not as important in explaining variance in anxiety, depression, and neuroticism. These data had a number of implications about attempts to relate irrational beliefs to emotional disturbance, about the scales used to measure irrational beliefs, and about the use of alexithymia to predict emotional disturbance.

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank the extremely helpful assistance provided by Dr. Paul J. Watson. This project would not have been possible without his encouragement, expertise, and guidance. Review and comments made by Dr. Michael D. Biderman and Dr. Lynn Ourth are greatly appreciated.

Degree

M. S.; A thesis submitted to the faculty of the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the degree of Master of Science.

Date

5-2000

Subject

Alexithymia; Emotions--Health aspects; Neuroticism; Anxiety disorders; Depression, Mental

Discipline

Comparative Psychology

Document Type

Masters theses

DCMI Type

Text

Extent

vi, 65 leaves

Language

English

Call Number

LB2369.2 .C843 2000

Rights

http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

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