Alexithymia and delayed ejaculation: a contribute to understand a neglected sexual dysfunction

Objectives: Alexithymia construct describes a set of personality features as difficulty in identifying and communicating emotions to others, reduced imaginal and fantasy activity, externally oriented cognitive style. High or moderate alexithymia levels have yet been documented in men with Erectile Dysfunction (ED) and Premature Ejaculation (PE). The aim of this study was to investigate the presence of alexithymia in men with Delayed Ejaculation (DE), comparing such results with data found from other Male Sexual Dysfunctions (MSD). Design and Methods: To 44 patients with DE diagnosed by DSM-IV-TR criteria, range age 20-63, was administered Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS-20), a validated tool used to evaluate alexithymia levels. Results: Only 9.1% of the patients could be categorized as alexithymic (TAS20>61), 4.5% of them were placed in the grey area (52-60) while 86.4 % of the sample were found to be non-alexithymic (<51). The overall average score of the TAS-20 was 44.70. The preliminary results show that alexithymia construct does not seem to be correlated with DE, differently from other MSD, where presence of such condition was found in about 63% of patients. Despite the well-known hyper-control configuration, patients with DE present no difficulty in identifying and communicating emotions to others. This datum is probably connected to the greater social acceptance of DE than PE and ED: the symptom doesn’t affect the core male identity. In a somatopsychic point of view, the consequent fewer individual and relational distress could represent an important protective factor from creating or exacerbating high levels of alexithymia. Conclusions: The preliminary data seem to suggest that DE, not being correlated to alexithymia construct, is maybe based on other individual psychogenic features. On a clinical level, these results suggest to carry out more researches on this aspect, in order to validate the various etiological theorizations yet existent to select the better therapeutic approach for this dysfunction.