Non-materialist psychiatrist Jeffrey Schwartz's new book: You Are Not Your Brain

The new book, written with Dr. Rebecca Gladding and to be released June 2011, provides a four-step guide to getting control of behaviours we know are bad for us.


Trouble is, we've practised them for so long that everything in us knows the routine, like the proverbial retired fire horse, and that's why we feel helpless to change.


Dr. Schwartz's breakthrough UCLA research work in treatments for obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) provided hard evidence that the mind can control the brain's chemistry. And

“You Are Not Your Brain” focuses on helping people use the Four Step method to deal with anxiety, depression, overeating, overthinking/overanalyzing, as well as find new, lasting ways to change habits that are unhelpful to them, such as using alcohol, substances or unhealthy behaviors to alleviate stress or deal with unsettling feelings and experiences.

Dr. Gladding shares his perspective:

Dr. Gladding has been working with Dr. Jeffrey M. Schwartz since 1999 and shares his philosophy that the mind can change the brain – most often without medications (or at the very least minimizing their use as much as possible). She is an expert in the biology underlying deceptive brain messages, mindfulness and the Four Steps and regularly teaches people how to apply the Four Steps to their lives, businesses and relationships.

Here's Dr. Schwartz on "Eye on Entertainment":



More on Dr. Schwartz here:

Neuroscience: The importance of focused attention

Do animals have souls?

The recent New Scientist flap re non-materialist neuroscience

Neuroscience: The importance of focused attention

In the Huffington Post, Rick Smith (October 9, 2009) notes

In a 2005 article for the United Kingdom's Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, physicist Henry Stapp and psychiatrist Jeffrey Schwartz showed that sustained concentrated attention on any particular mental experience-a thought, an insight, an image, even a fear-not only kept the brain circuitry involved open and alive but also eventually produced physical changes in the brain's structure. In effect, by increasing attention, you are creating brain architecture specifically suited to the challenges before you. Little wonder, then, that performance should grow dramatically.

Schwartz is the lead author of The Mind and the Brain, which sets forth this thesis in more detail. Basically, our minds become what we focus attention on, and this can be good or bad for us, depending on what that is.

Meanwhile, this Dark Age blog post (October 11 2009) mentions both Mario Beauregard, the third author of the 2005 paper and yours truly as well.

Podcasts with non-materialist neuroscientists

Materialism and human dignity

On this episode of ID the Future, Casey Luskin interviews Michael Egnor, professor of neurosurgery at SUNY, Stony Brook, on the relationship between the mind and the brain.

Listen in as Dr. Egnor explains how a materialist understanding of the mind undermines human dignity, affecting bioethics, criminal law, and ultimately how we treat one another as human beings.

Listen here.

I personally think this is a serious problem. A materialist understanding of life justifies manipulating people because neither they nor we are ultimately responsible for what we do.

Now here's the fun one!:

On this episode of ID the Future, Casey Luskin interviews neurosurgeon Michael Egnor and UCLA psychiatrist Jeffrey Schwartz on the interaction between the mind and the brain in science fiction. Could the mind really be an illusion from a computer program, like in The Matrix? Listen in as Drs. Egnor and Schwartz explain how materialist fictions ultimately beg the question.

Hey, if life is all just this big fiction:

Step this way, please ma'am ...

Oops, where'd she go? Down there?

Oh, that's right. Too bad nobody remembered to replace that staircase.

Oh, well, life is all just this big fiction anyway .... uh, not!

Non-materialist neuroscience: Jeffrey Schwartz on business leadership

If you can get past the awful title, "neuroleadership" - as if that's something different from plain old leadership - non-materialist neuroscientist Jeffrey Schwartz offers "How NeuroLeadership Can Impact Business and Talent Management" here (November 3, 2008.)

All I have ever known about leadership is this: We can lead people to where we live, but not to where we don't live.

Turning around, Jesus saw them following and asked, "What do you want?"

They said, "Rabbi" (which means Teacher), "where are you staying?"

"Come," he replied, "and you will see."

They went, and yes, they saw amazing things. But that is because Jesus really lived there and showed them what he really knew.

All real leadership begins with the recognition of reality and helping people adjust to it.

Neuroscience: Getting beyond mind-body problem

Actually, there isn't a mind-body problem. There is a materialism problem. If scientists cannot talk about non-material entities like the mind, they cannot help us understand basic facts like why so many people in the control group get better just because they know they are taking part in a study. Or why so many people die within a few years of losing a life partner (statistically beyond normal). What we think and how we think matters.

A recent symposium "Beyond the Mind-Body Problem", held at the United Nations, featured many non-materialist neuroscientists, including Mario Beauregard, lead author of The Spiritual Brain.

Here's the lineup:

Mario Beauregard, Ph.D.
Elie During, Ph.D.
Ebrahim Elahi, M.D., FACS
Bruce Greyson, M.D.
Andrew B. Newberg, M.D.
Sam Parnia, M.D., Ph.D.
Christina M. Puchalski, M.D., FACP
Jeffrey M. Schwartz, M.D.
Henry P. Stapp, Ph.D.
Esther M. Sternberg, M.D.

I am told that Jeffrey Schwartz, lead author of The Mind and the Brain, vastly livened up the proceedings ... as I very well believe.

And listen here to Kevin Keough's North Star Guardian interview with Mario Beauregard.

The photo above, taken by Bruce Greyson, features Schwartz, and physicist Henry Stapp, with Beauregard on the right - the three are the authors of a paper offering a model for non-materialist neuroscience (Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, 2004).

Here's the conference overview:

Over the past decade, an increasing number of physicians and neuroscientists have sought to uncover the complex relationship between mind, brain, and consciousness as they continue to search for a more comprehensive perspective on the "self" and the workings of the human mind. Though much remains to be done, their findings to date have shed a more holistic light on our understanding of the elusive mind-body problem. Join our panel of renowned experts as they explain how new paradigms fueled by the latest scientific research are beginning to fundamentally alter how we perceive and relate to the physical world.

The symposium will also serve as the occasion for the formal launch of The Human Consciousness Project—a multidisciplinary collaboration of international scientists and physicians who have joined forces to research the nature of consciousness and its relationship with the brain. Led by Dr. Sam Parnia, The Human Consciousness Project will conduct the world's first large-scale multicenter studies at major U.S. and European medical centers on the relationship between mind and brain during clinical death. The results of these studies may not only revolutionize the medical care of critically ill patients and the scientific study of the mind and brain, but may also bear profound universal implications for our understanding of death and what happens when we die.

Hat tip to Stephanie West Allen at Brains on Purpose.

Applied non-materialist neuroscience: Do not fire your boss before you listen to this ...

Nonmaterialist neuroscientist Jeffrey Schwart, lead author of The Mind and the Brain was interviewed on Australia's Open Mind Radio, and the files are just up. Stephanie West Allen of Brains on Purpose explains,

In the interview you will hear about the brain's plasticity and how understanding its malleability can give you and your clients more options for change. Some points covered:

You can harness neuroplasticity by paying attention to: 1) how you perceive, 2) how you act, and 3) what you think and imagine.

When you understand how your brain works, you can use that information to enhance your perspective, broaden your sense of capacity, and, by consistently changing your focus, change your brain.

Cultural differences are not merely matters of opinion. They are created by brain wiring, an "incredibly important" point, one which needs much more consideration and thought.

Many more topics are discussed. I urge you to listen. You will be reminded of how much of a sculptor of our lives we can be when we master the art of changing our brains. By learning about self-directed neuroplasticity, you are handed the ways and means of neuro-Play-Doh. So what are you going to mold and change? What are you going to help your clients to create?

Ah yes, cultural differences can be minefields in the workplace. For example, from my own experience, when the boss wants you to tell her what you "really" think about the new office layout, does she mean

(1) tell her you like it?
(2) tell her you hate it?
(3) offer her moral support for going through with it, without further comment?
(4) tell her what you've heard others say?
(5) use it as a springboard to talk about other, bigger issues in the workplace?

Typically, the culture your boss comes from determines what she "really" wants you to talk about at this point. And she may be wired to react along those lines. But you don't have to be. And getting something like that wrong can be a career limiting move. Anyway, check in at Mind Matters.