Graeme J. Taylor, MD, 2005

Dr. Taylor has spent the major portion of his academic career working at the interface of psychoanalysis and medicine. He is widely known for his contributions to psychosomatic theory and is a world authority on the psychoanalytic construct of alexithymia. His 1987 book, Psychosomatic Medicine and Contemporary Psychoanalysis, is a classic in the field. His research and theoretical formulations have advanced the psychoanalytic understanding of how emotions may contribute to the development of certain illnesses and diseases. In 1984 Dr. Taylor and his research associates developed the self-report Twenty-Item Toronto Alexithymia Scales (TAS-20), a revised and improved version of the scale they developed in the 1980s. The TAS-20 provides a reliable, valid, and common metric that has contributed significantly to a uniform and systematic collection of data that can be compared across studies. In more recent years, Dr. Taylor expanded his research to many other countries and cultures and has examined conditions such as hypertension, eating disorders, sleep problems, and gastrointestinal disorders.