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 affections.

Today we will talk about a specific alteration: parathymia. How do you explain that a person behaves incongruently to the situation he is 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.

• Related article: "The 8 types of emotions (classification and description)"

human emotions

Emotions allow us to adapt to the world in which we live.as well as our internal world. Together with them, feelings and affections constitute phenomena and tools for 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 one and predisposes to good mental health. Inadequate management or repression of them, on the other hand,

can cause the person discomfort and psychological suffering.

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 affective life encompasses all those experiences that define and limit the emotional life of a person. It is a set of tendencies and states that the person experiences in their own and immediate way.

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. For this reason, as we will see, the effects of parathymia extend to many areas of life.

Having said this, we are going 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 more lasting and less intense than emotions and, unlike them, they are not accompanied by somatic or vegetative symptoms. For example, feelings are love, jealousy or pride.

Mood or mood

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 willingness 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 the sad, happy mood...

Parathymia: affective disorders

There is a great variety of alterations that affect the commented 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.

parathymia, also called ideoaffective discord or incongruity, is the lack of relationship between what is verbally expressed and the affective experience. That is, the subject experiences inadequate or incongruous feelings 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 comprise quantitative (intensity) or qualitative (tone, nuance or quality) aspects.

Parathymia appears frequently in schizophrenia (especially when there are negative symptoms and disorders), in organic cerebral disorders and in primary affective disorders (although in the latter in a exceptional).

• You may be interested in: "What is schizophrenia? symptoms and treatments"

Types of parathymia

In addition to the aforementioned parathymia, there are 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 maintains in a characteristic euphoric and hyperactive state. It manifests itself in manic episodes of bipolar disorder or in organic conditions (moria).

In negative parathymia or pathological sadness, just the opposite happens; the subject feel especially sad or ashamed. It appears mainly in depressive episodes.

Its differences with affective indifference

We should not confuse parathymia with another affective disorder: coldness or affective 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 affective indifference appear cold, insensitive, and unable to become emotionally involved with other people or in their actions.

Like parathymia, this alteration appears in residual schizophrenia and in organic brain disorders. On the other hand, it can also manifest itself in some personality disorders.