Here is an article on Alexithymia. The attached comments are also interesting and worth reading.
Personality Disorders
Personality Disorders Versus Neuroses
30
May
2007
Over the last 30 years, numerous empirical studies have suggested it is possible to arrange defensive mechanisms into a hierarchy of relative psychopathology beginning in severity with “psychotic defenses”, and ranging through “immature defenses”, “intermediate defenses”, and finally, “mature defenses”. An individual with a personality disorder is defined as having “immature defenses” (i.e. acting out, splitting, projection) which, in terms of their effect on others, can be compared to a cigarette smoker in an elevator. Such behaviour seems innocent to the user and deliberately irritating and provocative to the observer. A defining quality of such defenses is they allow the person to externalize responsibility for their behaviour thereby providing justification for refusing help or accepting blame. Accordingly, such individuals tend to define other people or external events as the source of their problems. In some instances this perception can lead to self-righteous “acting out” of anger and frustration towards perceived offenders, and hence, one reason for their reputation of being difficult to get along with.
The Development of Personality Disorders
24
Jan
2007
In an effort to explain the different psychological and behavioural profiles between the diagnostic categories of “personality disorders” and “neurotics”, current clinical thinking and practice offers a neuro-social model of psychological developmental. The heart of this model is that there are fundamental differences in the character structure of individuals associated with these two diagnostic categories which originate from the early stages of neurological and psychological development; a position supported by increasing evidence in genetic-biological studies as well as psychodynamic-psychoanalytic research.