Emotions are central to daily life, and thus the capacity to process emotions is vital. Alexithymia is a trait characterized by difficulties paying attention to and accurately identifying one’s own emotions. First coined in the 1970s based on observations of psychiatric patients, the status of alexithymia as an important risk factor for psychopathology has driven considerable interest in the construct over recent decades. In this presentation, Dr Preece will provide an overview of the current status and applications of the alexithymia construct. He will begin by outlining his attention-appraisal model of alexithymia, as an integrative framework that maps alexithymia within the field of contemporary affective science, articulating its close links with emotion and emotion regulation. This will also include research findings exploring the mechanisms behind alexithymia and why it seems to put people at risk for emotional disorders. Next, Dr Preece will discuss contemporary approaches to alexithymia assessment, including his Perth Alexithymia Questionnaire and evidence for it providing comprehensive and robust alexithymia profiles. Lastly, Dr Preece will outline implications for the treatment of alexithymia and related emotional problems, including how alexithymia can be successfully targeted within cognitive behaviour therapy frameworks.

About the speaker

David A. Preece, PhD, is a Clinical Psychologist and Academic within the psychology faculty at the University of Western Australia (UWA). After completing his PhD at Edith Cowan University in Australia, Dr Preece did a Postdoctoral Research Fellowship as a Fulbright Scholar at Stanford University in the United States. At UWA, he is now the Director of the Perth Emotion & Psychopathology Lab, a multidisciplinary research group that seeks to bridge clinical science and affective science. Dr Preece’s main research and practice interests are in the assessment, understanding, and treatment of emotional disorders or problems (e.g., depression, anxiety, loneliness). He has published over 130 journal articles and book chapters in this area, including leading invited chapters in the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Psychology and the Handbook of Emotion Regulation. His work often examines the role that emotion processing and emotion regulation difficulties play in a range of mental health disorders, and how this understanding can be used to develop more advanced transdiagnostic treatments. David is the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Emotion and Psychopathology, and is on the journal Editorial Boards of the Journal of Personality Disorders and Frontiers in Psychiatry.