The relationship between perceived parenting, adult attachment style and alexithymia in alcoholic inpatients

In this paper we examine the understudied relationship between alexithymia on the one hand, and adult attachment and perceived parenting on the other hand, in a clinical sample of alcoholic inpatients (N = 101). We test whether differences between a high and a low scoring group on trait alexithymia can be predicted on the basis of attachment style and perceived parenting. We observed that the avoidant attachment style is a strong predictor. Subsequently we test whether three dimensions of alexithymia – affective, cognitive and social – are meaningfully linked to adult attachment and perceived parenting. We noticed that cognitive alexithymia especially was predicted by the avoidant attachment style and a lack of warmth perceived in the relationship to the father.