A patient's facial expression, vocal tone, and gestures all convey noticeably less feeling than expected across the whole interview, regardless of the topic, and she does not recognise any change in herself when this is pointed out. Before revealing the answer: is this stiffening of affect?
No, this is more consistent with blunting of affect than stiffening of affect. The disturbance here is a reduction in the range and intensity of emotional expression across the board, rather than a fixed-intensity emotional state that simply fails to shift with circumstances, which is the defining feature of stiffening of affect.
References
- Casey, P. & Kelly, B. (2019). Fish's Clinical Psychopathology, 4th ed. Ch. 6, 'Disorders of Emotion'.