Mel Schwartz

Mel Schwartz is an American psychotherapist, speaker, and author. He is one of the first contemporary psychotherapists to distill the principles of quantum physics into a psychotherapeutic approach to assist people to live to their fullest potential.[2]

Schwartz earned his MSW from Columbia University and MPhil from Lancaster University, in England.[3] His latest book, The Possibility Principle: How Quantum Physics Can Improve the Way You Think, Live and Love (2017), has received praise from best-selling authors, including Larry Dossey, Caroline Myss, Marilyn Schlitz, and Stanley Krippner.[4] Schwartz's TEDx Beacon Street talk, How to Overcome Anxiety in 7 Minutes, looks at how our need to seek certainty results in anxiety and how we can transcend this affliction.[5][6]

Dr. Howard Polsky, of Columbia University, has called Schwartz's earlier book, The Art of Intimacy, the Pleasure of Passion (1998), the most important book “to be read about the journey to happiness,”[7] while Dr. Peter Breggin has labeled Mel "a brilliant philosopher of science and psychology," who "brings Emergent Thinking to everything, from how we envision the physical universe to how we can improve our lives and our marriages."[8]

Schwartz has gained recognition for his methodology toward a mastery of thinking, in which he helps individuals free themselves from the habitual beliefs and thoughts that have constrained their lives. This approach enables people to overcome anxiety and depression without medication.[9]

Mel is a member of the Society for Consciousness Studies and has spoken at Yale University, among other venues, on his methods.[10] Dr. David Loy, an expert on Japanese Zen Buddhism, has praised Mel for his contributions to the field of contemporary psychotherapy and non-duality.[11] Schwartz has established an approach to fostering resilient relationships based upon themes he postulated in his books and many articles that view relationships through the filter of quantum inseparability.[12] He has written over 100 articles read by over 1.5 million people.[13] Schwartz trains and supervises therapists in his methodology, Trans-Cognitive Therapy, most recently at the 2017 annual CTAMFT Conference.[14]

Schwartz has proposed that the mental health community reconsider the nature of DSM diagnosis. He maintains that we should not conflate a diagnosis as being a literal “real” thing but merely as a description of what we think we see. He notes that our tendency to think in this manner is akin to reification.[15] His article Diagnosis Disorder articulates this thesis.[16] Schwartz suggests that much of the epidemic rate of mental health diagnoses, particularly anxiety and depression, are suggestive of living from an incoherent worldview.[17][18]