First Steps Dr Schwartz

Dr. Jeffrey Schwartz is President of First Steps to Freedom. His input to the Charity and in the field of OCD and anxiety, is invaluable. Indeed, his book "Brainlock: Free Yourself From Obsessive-Compulsive Behavior" is the seminal text on OCD and only available directly in the UK from First Steps to Freedom. Dr. Schwartz is a Research Professor of Psychiatry at UCLA School of Medicine and the author of almost 100 scientific publications in the fields of neuroscience and psychiatry. He is also the author of two popular books, the aforementioned "Brain Lock" and "A Return to Innocence: Philosophical Guidance in an Age of Cynicism" (1998). His major research interest over the past two decades has been brain imaging/functional neuroanatomy and cognitive-behavioral therapy, with a focus on the pathological mechanisms and psychological treatment of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD).

Dr. Schwartz received an honors degree in philosophy from the University of Rochester, and in the 1970s began to immerse himself in Buddhist philosophy, in particular, the philosophy of mindfulness, or conscious awareness. This is the idea that the mind is an active participant in the world, and that when the actions of the mind have an effect on the workings of the brain. It became his goal to find a scientific underpinning for the belief that mindfulness affects how the brain works. In the 1990s, at UCLA, he made his key discovery: that a four-step cognitive behavioral therapy he pioneered is capable of changing the activity in a specific brain circuit of patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder, as shown on PET scans. After publishing his findings in scientific journals in the mid-1990s, Dr. Schwartz used his discovery (which is becoming a widely utilized treatment for OCD and has been corroborated by other research teams) as the basis for his best-selling book "Brain Lock," which leads readers thorough the four-step cognitive-behavioral therapy that he devised to treat OCD. This four-step cognitive-behavioral therapy also provides the basis for the First Steps Anxiety self-help programme.

Dr. Schwartz's breakthrough in OCD provided the hard evidence that the mind can control the brain's chemistry, and that it can do so through the classic Buddhist idea of mindfulness. Dr. Schwartz's has lectured widely in the U.S., Europe and Asia to both professional and lay audiences. His most recent academic writing has been in the field of philosophy of mind, specifically on the role of volition in human neurobiology.

There are very effective treatments available for treating obsessive compulsive disorder, and as you just heard in the clearest of ways the suffering from the symptoms can be very profound--even to the point where people seriously contemplate ending their lives through suicide in an attempt to escape them.

The fact is that there are now ways to treat this effectively, combining both the use of medication as well as things you can learn to do with your mind itself. Mental training can be really effective in helping people with obsessive compulsive disorder change not only their functioning and the pragmatic clinical course of the disorder, but also as we're going to see change the brain itself.

This brings us to the second aspect, perhaps as important as the first: the profound implications of medical science demonstrating that what people do with their mind affects how the brain works. I see it as our mission going forward as a society to increasingly have people realize that how you focus your attention, and what you focus your attention on, has very significant affects on how your brain works.

I think that in the materialist culture that the 20th century bequeathed us there is a tendency for people to view themselves as just passive recipients of their own mental contents. Essentially viewing themselves as almost like machines, people can come to believe there is nothing very much you can do about your troublesome feelings unless you take some drug, and that you're basically doomed to more or less to sit there experiencing the affects of a problem like OCD until someone finds a drug to make it better.

Now in no way am I implying that medications are not very helpful in treating neuropyschiatric conditions with a clear cut biological basis, such as obsessive compulsive disorder. However I think that to go forward as a medical community and as a society we need to realize that the materialist approach not only to mental and physical health, but even to life itself, tends to strip us of our capacity to connect with the power we all have within us. And it is this power, with which we are all endowed, that enables us to bring about tremendous changes in the way we live and even the way our brain works.

I think its relatively clear, if you just think about the implications of all this, that it can have profound societal affects in terms of issues of personal responsibility. Actions truly have consequences not only in the most ordinary way of how they affect other people but even how it affects your brain and how it works. This is the big message going forward and the great implications it has for treating mental health problems, and medical disorders in general, are extremely important.

In the next few minutes I'm going to try to explain to you how much the symptoms of this condition can be understood as a brain related medical problem. The first point is that people with obsessive compulsive disorders have increased metabolism, or another way of saying the same thing is excessive energy use, in a specific region of their brain. This excessive energy sits right over the eye orbit or the eye socket, an area of the brain called the orbital frontal cortex. There is a picture of this in my book Brain Lock on the back cover and on page xxiii.

It is well known from a lot of neurobehavioural research that this part of the brain is involved in people making emotional assessments of their environment. More specifically, it is involved in getting the feeling that something isn't right in the environment, or what we can sometimes call an error detection signal. The big point is that people with obsessive compulsive disorder have shown increases in metabolism in this part of the brain that gives one the feeling that something is wrong. This part of the brain is really overactive in people with OCD.

There is almost certainly a connection between that biological change and for instance the description we just heard of feeling like you live in a dump, and the reason why the bothersome feeling doesn't go away is just because the brain is overactive.

Another important brain structure for understanding OCD is the caudate nucleus. There is a picture of it on page 59 of Brain Lock. The caudate nucleus is like an automatic transmission in the brain. What is happening and where the term brain lock comes from, is that an error detection circuit that's contained in the orbital frontal cortex literally gets locked in gear. The result is you are bombarded with these very bothersome troubling feelings.

This is the situation in overview--at the bottom of the front of the brain is the orbital frontal cortex, which can send error detection signals. It sends its signals by a direct connection to the caudate nucleus, which acts like an automatic transmission. Largely because of biologically inherited traits the caudate nucleus gets stuck in gear again and again and again and these very bad thoughts, these bothersome troubling thoughts, keep bombarding into the persons conscious awareness.

Now what can one do about this? The really good news is that there is a lot that can be done about this problem. While it is quite common, affecting one person in forty in the general population, there is also a huge amount of data that it is a very treatment responsive illness.

There are certainly medications that can help with the treatment process. What those medications do is actually act on the neurochemical transmitter serotonin, which is very widespread throughout the brain, particularly in that caudate nucleus and orbital frontal cortex area. By modulating serotonin levels in the brain, the medications over a period of several months bring down the intensity of the intrusive bothersome feelings.

We can also change the activity in those very same structures of the brain by learning how to redirect our attention and the way to redirect our attention is largely a function of a mental process called mindfulness. This has profound philosophical significance and was first described 2500 years ago by Gotama Buddha.

Mindfulness is the foundation of Buddha's philosophy and of the practice of meditation. However, when used as a form of mental development for something like treating OCD, it has no religious content at all. This is really important to stress--nothing in the use of mindfulness would ever impinge on the religious beliefs of any other religion. Even though in some sense it has what you might call a spiritual content, this is in a general sense of having the mind influence the brain.

Mindfulness as a mental action is described in the abstract in the conference program book (which I have attached as an appendix at the end of this paper). I really encourage you to read the abstract to have a record to refer back to. Understand that mindfulness is an action in which you learn and train yourself to direct your attention in a wholesome and healthy manner.

Mindfulness is a training process to observe your inner experience with calm and with a feeling of clarity. Observing the inner experience calmly, clearly and without responding to it. For instance in the case that we just heard one would make mental notes reminding oneself that although the experience is very unpleasant, it is not something that one needs to worry about in terms of taking over control of ones mind. The process of observing in itself helps people increasingly come to the realization that they can change their responses to those thoughts in very adaptive ways.

The Four Steps are the basis of the treatment approach presented in the book Brain Lock (they are listed in a chart on page 219). The term brain lock refers to the error detection circuit that is locked in the on position. The Relabel step, which is the first step and recognizes the intrusive thoughts and urges as nothing but the symptoms of OCD, is essentially the equivalent of what I have just described as mindfulness. Another way of thinking of the Relabeling step is called "making mental notes."

What you want to train your mind to do in the Relabel step is to recognize that the reason why you feel like you do when you are having on OCD symptom is simply because of a medical condition, a treatable medical condition. What this does is begin to put things in a real life perspective. You can begin to understand why your consciousness is being bombarded by such bothersome experiences.

We are now taking advantage of advancements in medical science, which have shown us without a doubt that there are brain mechanisms that are responsible for those feelings being there. Then we are coupling that to a traditional process of mental observation. We are using that traditional process of clear-minded mental observation to really put in a context why these thoughts are bothering us so much--because we have a treatable medical condition. The second step answers the question why does it keep bothering us.

The first step is to Relabel. We put an accurate notation in our own mind that answers the question, "What is this that's bothering me?" and the answer is a treatable medical condition, OCD. In fact this process works equally well for panic attacks, panic disorder, social phobia and essentially all the anxiety disorders. We must realize that the feeling itself is not what is important, it is our understanding of the fact that we can mindfully observe the feeling and thereby change our responses to it. This will make us well and make our minds more powerful and even change the underlying chemistry of our brain in ways that move us toward the healthy path.

So the second step, Reattribute is answering the question, "Why do they keep bothering me?" The thing that really makes them debilitating is that they don't go away, they keep bothering you and bothering you. The answer to that question is that the intensity and intrusiveness of the thought or urge is caused by the medical condition OCD, and it's probably the result of a biochemical imbalance in the brain. So you attribute the bad feeling to OCD and stop blaming yourself for it.

We then came up with this little aphorism that a patient actually said, "it's not me it's the OCD". Now that has a lot to do with mindfulness because it's mindfulness that is allowing you to see clearly that you are not the disease and that your mind and your consciousness are not the disease process. There is an observing aspect of the mind that can really maintain its independence even though the contents of the consciousness are being flayed around by the disease process. We are really training the mind to not identify with those experiences but to see ourselves as separable from those experiences.

Now once we see our mind as separable from those experiences we can go on to the critical third step. This step, called Refocus, actually changes how the brain works. In the Refocus step the critical key phrase is "work around." Work around, I am using as a technical term. Work around the OCD symptoms by focusing attention on something else by doing something else and the key phrase here is do another behaviour. The term "work around" means don't wait for the feeling to go away--Work Around it by doing another behaviour, even though the feeling is still bothering you.

Now why is that so important? The reason why work around is a technical term is because the hard part of this treatment that really requires will and stick-to-it-iveness and courage is remembering that you can't make those feelings go away in the short term. You really are working around them, and in that way its like an obstacle course.

You have to go over or around or any way you can get past getting locked into compulsive behaviours like washing and checking. You remind yourself I want to do something useful, and generally what you want to do is something that you like to do that's both familiar and useful.

When you do this on a regular basis you literally change the gearbox shifting capacity of the caudate nucleus. What you have happen is that the gearbox now starts shifting to good behaviours. Because of the underlying medical disease process it won't shift to the good behaviours unless you literally shift it yourself by refocusing your attentions willfully on an adaptive behaviour. The key phrases are do another behaviour while working around the fact that the bothersome thoughts and urges are still there.

The most important rule of thumb for this critical step is not to try to make the thoughts go away, because in the short term that's something you can't do. There are powerful brain mechanisms going on and that's where people need a lot of support with this treatment. There is a natural tendency to want to make these symptoms just go away. However you have to accept the fact that the symptoms are there but realize with mindfulness that they don't have to control what you do. This is why we say "It's not how you feel it's what you do that counts," and that's such an important principle for life.

In practice this means that if you want to change how you feel you have to do good things. If you put all of the focus of your attention on doing good things, your feelings will naturally follow. If you put too much of your attention on how you feel then you get a lot of emotional responses because you are too wrapped up in your feelings, and things can just spiral into becoming more and more intense and out of control.

Now when you do things in the proper way and put your attention on your action what ends up happening is that you really come to Revalue which is step four and is the last step of this process. It can often take several weeks or months to kick in. Revalue means that you really learn not to take the OCD or what ever anxiety symptom we're talking about at face value. Instead you literally recognize the feeling in a different way. This is the most powerful part of mindfulness because with mindfulness you can literally have the same feeling but have a totally different meaning than it did before you were mindful.

So it is not the feeling that needs the change, it is your understanding of the truth that needs to change. As your understanding of the truth develops then this feeling that I need to wash, I need to check, I can't breathe if it's a panic attack, whatever the phobia might be changes. The key is to put a different value on that feeling and say "oh well that's just the symptom, that's just the medical symptom I don't need to listen to that I'm going to refocus and do an adaptive behaviour." Yes it takes mindfulness. Yes it takes mental strength. But it's a powerful process with powerful results.

When you do this it literally changes your brain in a very significant way. You literally have used your mind to change your brain. We can also use the standard medications, the so-called Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors to change the activity in the gearbox in ways that are helpful. As we said before the medications change the activity in the gear box and the feelings do decrease on account of that. I'm more than happy to use medications in people for whom they are appropriate, and in more than half the people with significant OCD they are appropriate at least in some course of the treatment. The fact that is so encouraging for us that you can cause those same changes to occur in the metabolism of the gear box by using just your mind and its capacity to refocus on a new behaviour.

With the learning of new and better habits, and the new patterns of focusing attention, you literally see biological changes in the area of the brain that functions as the gearbox. I strongly believe this lowers the need for medications, too, although much more research needs to be done on this aspect of treatment. I think all of the clinicians here at the conference would agree that when people do the cognitive behaviour therapy there is often a progressive decrease in the amounts of medication that are needed.

Slowly over time you can see people needing less medication than they would if they did not do the cognitive behaviour therapy. I would strongly urge clinical researchers in the field to really pursue this hypothesis in a systematic way. I think it would be really good to collect more data that says as people work on cognitive behaviour therapy and change how their brain works their requirement for medication decreases along with that. Already we have a lot of clinical evidence that this is true.

This is very helpful and it's also financially helpful to. It's certainly helpful on the side effect picture. But another point that is even more important is that we are now empowered and we realize that our mind has real power to affect how our brain works.

The focus of our will through the utilization of refocusing of our attention and doing another behaviour empowers us to change inborn pathological circuitry in the brain. In that message I think comes an awareness that can really affect our entire culture in terms of the power of mindfulness to change not only our lives but even the inner workings of our brain.

Thank you very much.

"The Mind & The Brain: Neuroplasticity and the Power of Mental Force" by Jeffrey M. Schwartz, Sharon Begley

Dr Schwartz's latest book, Published in the US by Regan Books; ISBN: 0060393556 on October 15, 2002

Available exclusively in the UK from First Steps to Freedom at £16.99 (hardback) and £8.99 (paperback) plus £2.00 post and packing from the registered address. Click here for details

Press Release:
The greatest scientific advances are never the result of strict adherence to convention. Often it takes an innovative maverick, someone willing to see things differently while possessing the determination and intelligence to substantiate his unusual claims. Jeffrey M. Schwartz, M.D., a leading neuroscientist and Research Professor of Psychiatry at the UCLA School of Medicine, an international authority on brain diseases and author of the definitive work on obsessive compulsive disorder, Brain Lock, has defied convention again in his new book, The Mind and the Brain: Neuroplasticity and the Power of Mental Force (ReganBooks; $25.95; October 2002; Hardcover). The Mind and the Brain, written with Sharon Begley, formerly Newsweek's senior science writer and now science columnist for The Wall Street Journal, is a work as profound as it is provocative: a book that gives substantial proof that - contrary to popular scientific belief - the mind and the brain are two distinct entities.

For years, there has been a division between the assumptions of hard science-which contended that the brain functioned essentially as a machine-and our daily human experience, which seems to suggest that "the mind" is something different from the physical brain, a force we are capable of harnessing for our benefit. This was a conflict that always bothered Jeffrey Schwartz, a distinguished UCLA neuroscientist responsible for the revolutionary Four Steps therapy that has helped patients around the world battle the effects of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). In response, he developed an OCD therapy that was grounded in cognitive-behavioral principles, which drew on a patient's own awareness of his state of mind, and involved the patient directly in his own therapy.

Combining the revelations of more than two decades of research with a progressive approach influenced by the Buddhist principle of "mindful awareness," Schwartz's therapy was wildly successful. But beyond the hope it offered to OCD sufferers, it also opened a door into a much more significant revelation: while reviewing his patients' brain scans, Schwartz discovered that their self-directed therapy was actually changing the wiring of their brains. This major discovery is at the core of The Mind and the Brain: that through the power of thought-specifically, by focusing attention-human beings can use their own minds to change their brains.

The scientific implications of this discovery are manifold: Victims of neurological dysfunction such as stroke may be able to use the discovery to begin to reassume command of their bodies and lives, and psychiatrists treating patients with mental disorders may be able to apply these ideas successfully to their treatment, allowing them to decrease their patients' reliance on psychiatric drugs. As a therapeutic advance, thus, The Mind and the Brain offers a paradigm shift that promises new treatments for conditions from dyslexia to depression.

But the repercussions of Schwartz's discovery may go well beyond the realm of abstract science. For it amounts to the most conclusive scientific evidence to date we have of the existence of human free will-that is, the power of human beings to take an active role in their physical lives. In the book Schwartz points accusingly at the "moral vacuum" created the old, materialistic hard-science worldview, and raises questions of personal responsibility in a new light. In criminal situations, for example, "if actions are merely the inevitable consequences of hard-wired brain circuitry," Schwartz observes that "the concept of genuine moral culpability becomes untenable"-leading down a slippery slope to lenient sentences for criminals who abuse the insanity defense.

Infused with the insatiable curiosity of a scientific trailblazer and the passion of a crusader, The Mind and the Brain is a daring and groundbreaking work of research and vision-one whose conclusions are sure to make waves within the scientific community, and to affect profoundly the human race's understanding of itself.

"Both profound and engaging; a splendid read and a real tour de force of intellect that opens new vistas of scientific philosophy."
Floyd E. Bloom, M.D.
Chairman, Department of Neuropharmacology, Scripps Research Institute

"THE MIND AND THE BRAIN clearly spells out arguments for a possible solution to the problem of where consciousness belongs in the natural world."
Brian Josephson
Professor of Physics, University of Cambridge and
Nobel Laureate in Physics

"A stirring refutation of the materialist superstition that grips the world of behavioralism and denies the primacy of mind over brain. Bringing to bear exciting new findings from quantum physics and neuroscience, they have performed a daring rescue of the concept of the free human will, opening the way to new frontiers of healing and transcendence."
George Gilder
Author of Microcosm and Telecosm

Brainlock: Free Yourself from Obessive Compulsive Disorder
Publisher: HarperCollins (paper); ISBN: 0060987111; (March 1997)

Available exclusively in the UK from First Steps to Freedom
click here for details

"A remarkable achievement! This book will make a world of difference in the lives of people with OCD."
Eric Hollander, M.D.,
Compulsive, Impulsive & Anxiety Disorders Program, Mt. Sinai School of Medicine

"Dr. Schwartz, you and your work on ocd have literally saved my life. Having been tortured by ocd for over 20 years and not knowing what was wrong, reading your book Brainlock and putting it into practice was something so great that I can't begin to thank you enough!All of the questions were answered,the never- ending torture of my ocd was finally explained and I could begin to deal with it.The ocd had gotten so intense that I was ready to put a bullet in my head to stop the war inside. The way that you laid out the 4 steps just hits the nail right on the head! The knowledge that you share in A Return to Innocence is also incredible,knowing why the brain and mind do what they do is immensely helpful.I could go on and on and still feel that my words haven't adequately described what a great work you have done for mankind, and how you were able to develop the 4 Steps so that the ocd questions finally had answers! Best Wishes"
Tony Lord, excerpt from http://www.hope4ocd.com/guestbook/

I have had OCD seriously for about 12 years, I was scared of contamination to such an extent that I gave up fighting it and gave in to it - the worse thing I could of done. For the last 10 years I have lived in a chair in one room frightened to go into all the other rooms of my house, and scared to go out anywhere, except occasionally to my Mums but I would always have to shower and wash when i got home. Several major things have happened in my life to make me realise and BELIEVE that I can get well and break free from this illness, but one thing that has helped, is the advice that Dr Shwartz gives on the behaviour Therapy techniques he teaches. To learn that you could actually change your brains chemistry and workings by defying the OCD gave me great encouragement. So I have been facing up to it and fighting it. Yesterday I went to my Mums, gave her a hug, made a cup of tea, sat down in the house, left and when I got home I DID NOT have to shower and wash for hours like I normally would, so I'm all CONTAMINATED and you know what? I feel GREAT! If I can do it anyone can, Thankyou Dr Shwartz, I would love to meet you some day and tell you my story, I think you would find it very interesting.
Sani, excerpt from http://www.hope4ocd.com/guestbook/

"I think Dr. Schwartz's Four Steps, and the philosophical basis behind the Four Steps, is an awesome contribution toward the treatment of mental illness. Too often, medical professionals (from my personal experience), dispense medications in the hope that the client/patient achieves some kind of stability and normal functioning. I believe, this is a dangerous approach because medication doesn't deal with the root element of self-management and the accompanying thought process. It is my contention, that OCD leaves a deep imprint on the mind of the person afflicted with the it. Just as patients in physical therapy go through the grueling process of learning how to regain use of a part of the body, so too people with OCD have to start the process of learning how to regain the "proper" use of their brain and mind. The person afflicted with OCD, has, in varying degrees, reacted to others, their community, and to their selves under the guise of OCD. In essence, that person has been dealing with life from an OCD perspective. Medication cannot, in and of itself, cannot recondition a person's thought process or stance toward life from a non-OCD perspective. That is why I think Dr. Schwartz' Four Steps is sorely needed. It brings a philosophical/spiritual perspective that promises a different way of living to those who actively participate."
Jose Meras
excerpt from http://www.hope4ocd.com/guestbook/

by Jeffrey M., Md Schwartz, Annie Gottlieb, Patrick Buckley
Published by DIANE Publishing Co; ISBN: 0788168533; (December 1998)

Description:
On the verge of a new millennium, in an age of unprecedented affluence, personal freedom and scientific power, millions of usyoung and not so youngfind ourselves emotionally and morally adrift. Even as our mastery of the material world reaches new heights almost daily, mastery of the inner worldof our own actions, emotions, and deepest hopesoften tragically eludes our grasp. As families come apart, adults become bitter and emotionally detached. Children fall prey to a "culture" of sex and drugs, cynical materialism, and self-destructive nihilism. It increasingly seems that, in the piercing words of Jesus, we have "gained the whole world, and lost our own souls."
In A Return to Innocence, psychiatrist and neuroscientist Jeffrey M. Schwartza Jewish student of both Buddhist meditation and Christian philosophycombines 3,000 years of wisdom with cutting edge brain and behavioral research to guide us in recovering our souls, our safety, our integrity and our capacity to love. After a 35-year experiment in unbridled self-gratification that has left a burden of tremendous suffering in its wake, at last we are ready to understand that innocencein its original meaning of "not harming"is actually the highest and most difficult of human achievements. The lost art of self-command that empowers us not to harm ourselves or one another is the core teaching of humanity's greatest spiritual masters, including Moses, Jesus, and Buddha. If we value our children, our culture, even our very freedom, we must return to true innocence as our source of inner lightness, clarity and spiritual power. A practical path to this wellspring of inner purity was mapped out 2,500 years ago by Gotama Buddhain Dr. Schwartz's view the greatest psychologist who ever livedwhose still-fresh insights into human nature can serve as a bridge joining the wisdom of the Bible to the discoveries of 21st century science.
A deeply felt, thought-provoking exchange of letters between "spiritual coach" Dr. Schwartz and sixteen-year-old Patrick Buckley, the son of a single mother, frames this fascinating, powerful code for living that shows how the best in each of us can thrive. Spiritual and philosophical ideas become hands-on tools for dealing with real-life dilemmas as Dr. Schwartz addresses Patrick's urgent questions about morality, responsibility, and freedom of choice.
This book offers an empowering combination of hope, inspiration, accurate information about the biology of human nature, as well as desperately-needed guidance for keeping that nature on a life-affirming path. To everyoneyoung and oldA Return to Innocence offers dynamic, concrete solutions for the pain in our hearts, the fear in our streets, and the cynicism that has corroded our ideals. It speaks directly to our longing for a decent, meaningful, and fulfilling life.
The traditional values that made civilization possible were thought to be outrageously radical and daring when they were first introduced by revolutionaries like Moses, Buddha, Jesus and Mohammed. . . . Yet those codes of behavior became "traditional"that is, they got handed down from generation to generationfor one simple reason: they work. And they work because they're based on a highly sophisticated and deeply wise understanding of human nature.
We often hear the phrase "Knowledge is power"but nowhere is it truer than when it comes to knowledge of ourselves.
Are we humans primarily driven, or "drivers"? Are we blameless puppets of our genes, our hormones, our childhoods, or do we have the power, and so the responsibility, to choose what we will do?
In our day and age, everyone wants to be, or at least appear to be, streetwise, experienced, cool, and cynical. What people don't realize is that the source of the word "innocent" is a place of great power. It comes from the Latin words for "not" and "to harm." True innocence is the highest of human accomplishments. Not doing harm requires the utmost in awareness, effort, and courage.

The state of the world begins right herein the state of your mind.

"The result is a deeply moving book topical and true enough to keep the average adult and the average hungry-minded teen thinking about it long after they finish reading." --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title."
Norah Vincent, The Weekly Standard

"... an astonishingly powerful road map to virtue.... Parents seeking language to explain traditional morality, teens seeking a way out of the ugly, hopeless world created by their elders, Christians interested in the moral technology (though not the theology) Buddhism and modern science provide should look up this thoughtful guide."
Maggie Gallagher, New York Post

"Hi, Dr. Schwartz! Remember me? I'm doing fabulously well---no lie! You would not believe all of the incredible accomplishments I have achieved both personally and professionally. Every day is a good day, with challenges that I know I can meet and embrace, simply because I have brain power to do so! Your book, A Return to Innocence, has truly made an impact on my personal philosophies concerning my choices in moral and humane issues. It's amazing what truths have come to my attention since I have started thinking deeply about how I should actually view my life, existence and contributions here on Earth. Your website is simply wonderful! It is so comprehensive and helpful for people surfing the net, and hopefully, many will find comfort and guidance in accessing the knowledge you provide. Please take good care of yourself, as I know you always hope others will do for themselves. P.s.--Did your new book on Science come out? Oh--and I'm still passing out A Return to Innocence to moms that I meet at school!"
Deborah Y. Chew, excerpt from http://www.hope4ocd.com/guestbook/