Externally-Oriented Thinking: 24 Points <18 - 21>
In this category you show high alexithymic traits.

Problematic Interpersonal Relationships: 21 Points <15 - 18>
In this category you show high alexithymic traits.

Difficulty Describing Feelings: 15 Points <10 - 12>
In this category you show high alexithymic traits.

Difficulty Identifying Feelings: 17 Points <15 - 18>
In this category you show some alexithymic traits.

Sexual Difficulties and Disinterest: 12 Points <10 - 12>
In this category you show some alexithymic traits.

Restricted Imaginative Processes: 12 Points <18 - 21>
In this category you show no alexithymic traits.

Vicarious Interpretation of Feelings: 7 Points <8 - 9>
In this category you show no alexithymic traits.

Attachment is a word used by psychologists to describe the relationship between children and their caretakers. When we watch the behavioral patterns that characterize this relationship, four types of attachment are seen: secure, avoidant, ambivalent, and disorganized.

Avoidant and ambivalent attachment are organized forms of insecure attachment, meaning that these children are observed to be insecure in their attachment to the mother, but have modified themselves and their interactions with their mother in an organized way. Children who are disorganized — also an insecure attachment — have not developed an organized way to respond to their caregiver[...]

I also find myself wondering if some large-scale parallel process is at work in the lack of general attention to psychoanalytic knowledge about schizoid issues. George Atwood once commented to me that the controversy over whether or not multiple personality (dissociative identity disorder) “exists” is strikingly parallel to the ongoing, elemental internal struggle of the traumatized person who develops a dissociative psychology: “Do I remember this right or am I making it up? Did it happen or am I imagining it?” It is as if the mental health community at large, in its dichotomous positions about whether there really are dissociative personalities or not, is enacting a vast, unacknowledged countertransference that mirrors the struggle of the patients in question. Comparably, we might wonder whether our marginalizing of schizoid experience parallels the internal processes that keep schizoid individuals on the fringes of engagement with the rest of us.

When asked if he felt maladaptive daydreaming should be considered a pathology, Klinger, the University of Minnesota psychologist, drew an insightful analogy.

“If you’re running a fever, that’s generally considered pathology. It’s just an extreme example of a normal defense mechanism of the body,” he said. Excessive daydreaming could be a normal process that goes out of bounds. “It’s pathological insofar as it’s injurious.”

Would there be any potential downside to calling maladaptive daydreaming a pathology?

“Only in a sense in that if you call it a pathology, you’re looking for a very specific concrete kind of cure, and that tends to be a pharmaceutical cure,” Klinger replied. “It’s not as productive as it would be if you handle it on a behavioral basis.” Many people who have intense, plot-rich daydreams function well at work and in relationships, he noted. And for those who don’t function well, it could be productive to tackle the themes and conflicts that come up consistently in their daydreams, resolving those issues through therapy.