Michael A. Schwartz
Michael Alan Schwartz is an American academic and psychiatrist based in Austin, Texas. In 2018 Schwartz retired as Clinical Professor of Psychiatry and Joint Professor of Humanities in Medicine at the Texas A&M School of Medicine. He is currently and Adjunct Professor at this medical school. His work has focused on advancing pluralistic, person and people-centered approaches to psychiatric assessment, care and treatment. Schwartz is one of the Founding Editors in Chief of Philosophy, Ethics and Humanities in Medicine, Associate Editor of Philosophy, Psychiatry and Psychology, and a member of the Comité de Lecture of PSN  (Psychiatrie, Sciences humaines, Neurosciences). He is a Distinguished Life Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association. Education. Schwartz received his A.B. from Princeton University and his M.D. from Cornell University Medical College. Subsequently, he joined Cornell University’s hospital as an intern and continued working there until 1974. From 1972 to 1974, he also worked as a clinical associate at the Laboratory of Neuropsychiatry at the National Institute of Mental Health. Career. In 1974, Schwartz joined the Cornell University Medical College as an Assistant Professor of Psychiatry. Simultaneously, he started working as an inpatient unit chief at the New York Hospital  - Westchester Division. In 1979, he joined the New York Medical College as an Associate Professor of Clinical Psychiatry and taught there until 1992 when he left to join Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine. While teaching at Case Western, he also served as Professor and Vice Chair of Education in Psychiatry from 1992 to 1996 and as Professor of Psychiatry from 1996-2000. Schwartz became Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Case Western in 2000. In 2005, he left Case Western and joined the University of Hawai'i at Manoa as Clinical Professor of Psychiatry. After leaving University of Hawaii in  2012, Schwartz joined the Texas A&M Health Science Center College of Medicine and served, until 2018, as Clinical Professor of Psychiatry and Joint Professor of Humanities in Medicine. While at Texas A&M, he has served as Regional Chair (Round Rock) for the Texas A&M College of Medicine’s Departments of Psychiatry (2012) and of Humanities in Medicine (2012-2017). He is presently an Adjunct Professor at the Texas A&M College of Medicine. In 1991, Schwartz served as Founding President of the Association for the Advancement of Philosophy and Psychiatry (AAPP). He served as President of AAPP from 1991-1994 and  was on the Executive Council of AAPP from 1989-2013. Since 2013, Schwartz has served on the Executive Council of the Karl Jaspers Society of North America, and since 2019 on the National Advisory Council of the Hogg Foundation for Mental Health. Work. Schwartz's work, anchored in phenomenology, has focused on advancing pluralistic, person and people-centered approaches to psychiatric assessment, care and treatment. His work emphasizes that any single theory used to understand and treat the person will only permit a one-sided and limited perspective on that patient’s situation - pointing the psychiatrist toward some facts about  the patient but at the same time blinding the psychiatrist to others. In order to gain a fuller understanding, the psychiatrist must draw on other perspectives, also one-sided and limited. Hence, in the end, every perspective both reveals and conceals aspects of the patient’s condition.