About Sheldon Litt, Ph.D.

[Image: Sheldon Litt, Ph.D.]

Dr Sheldon Litt is an American psychologist who trains professionals in modern methods of psychotherapy. He has taught at many universities in northern Europe. He was trained by Fritz Perls at the New York Institute for Gestalt Therapy.S. Litt, Inedalsgatan 25, S-11233 Stockholm, Sweden. Tel: +468 651 2489 Email: sheldonlitt@hotmail.com.

Articles by Sheldon Litt, Ph.D.

  1. Gestalt Therapy and Humanistic Psychology

    Listed in holistic psychotherapy

    Psychology is a discordant discipline. The beginning of the 1900s saw the rise of behaviourism in the laboratory, and the ascendancy of psychoanalysis in the treatment room. Around ...

  2. Doctor of the Soul

    Listed in psychology

    I was in New York recently, where I had lunch with a former colleague, Harriet, who is now a high-flying industrial psychologist, whatever that is. I think she travels around giving...

  3. Beauty

    Listed in psychology

    What is it about beauty that fascinates us? In fact, more basically, what is beauty? What are the criteria for judging something or someone as being beautiful?

  4. Encounters with Philosophers

    Listed in psychology

    Recently, I read in the newspapers about the current trend for people who are troubled to seek help through philosophy rather than visit the psychotherapist office. The hope is that...

  5. Carl Jung on Human Relations

    Listed in psychology

    In the last two issues of Positive Health, we discussed some of the primary ideas of Carl Jung, one of the early pioneers of the psychoanalytic movement, who broke with Freud to eme...

  6. More on Jung

    Listed in psychology

    As mentioned in the previous column, Jungian notions of creativity have had the most acceptance by psychologists of various disciplines.

  7. Carl Jung (1875-1961)

    Listed in psychology

    Attacks on Freudian psychoanalysis the past decade have started to erode support for the old Viennese master, but Jung has been relatively immune from this new scepticism in the fie...

  8. Don Juan and Casanova

    Listed in psychology

    Psychology is often not the best source of wisdom concerning the passions of life. Probably better to turn to great literature and real life itself. This is especially true when dis...

  9. The Psychology of Back Pain

    Listed in back pain

    On the front page of the leading Swedish daily newspaper today, the respected broadsheet DAGENS NYHETER (The Daily News), is featured a major article on back pain. The gist of this ...

  10. One Hundred Years of Sigmund Freud

    Listed in psychology

    As 1999 transforms into the year 2000, it is a good time to look back on the contribution of Sigmund Freud to the field of psychology. It was 100 years ago that Freud first major bo...

  11. What's Normal? Part II

    Listed in psychology

    The problem of normality in the field of psychology is a complicated one, diffused as it is with theories of health. The difficulty is that each practitioner has his own notion of w...

  12. What's Normal?

    Listed in psychology

    One of the confusing elements surrounding the field of psychology is the concept of normal. People ask themselves and others, Am I normal? Are you normal? The popular press has doze...

  13. Why is Sex Important?

    Listed in psychology

    I am at a party in New York. There is a lull in the conversation. A young woman next to me smiles with evil intent and asks – Why do you psychologists think sex is so importa...

  14. Doctor of the Soul

    Listed in psychology

    I was at a party last week, and sometime after a long conversation with a group of people, an unknown gentleman, well-dressed in a tweed jacket, broke in and suddenly inquired of me...

  15. Laura Perls (1905-1990): Co-Founder of Gestalt Therapy

    Listed in psychology

    Sheldon Litt describes the basics of Laura Perls background: her teachers at Frankfurt/Main University, how she met her husband-to-be, Fritz Perls and her subsequent practice as a p...

  16. Identity Problems

    Listed in holistic psychotherapy

    This latest article from regular contributor, Sheldon Litt, discusses the issue of Existentialism in Psychotherapy and how such an approach can be of great value in the consulting r...

  17. Phobias and Fears

    Listed in psychology

    There are two kind of phobias: those that are exaggerations or intensifications of fears that are common to most of us, and fears that are special to the phobic sufferer and arouse ...

  18. The Use of The Past in Psychotherapy

    Listed in holistic psychotherapy

    In his column this month Sheldon Litt explores the use of the past in psychotherapy.

  19. Paths Through Life

    Listed in psychology

    In his column this month Sheldon Litt addresses the question of the path each of us takes through life. In writing the on going story of our life each of us is his own script writer...

  20. How to Make Decisions

    Listed in psychology

    Having trouble deciding to write about this month Dr Litt decided to write about making decisions. Perfectionism and a fear of taking risks are both important motivations for not ma...

  21. How to be More Creative

    Listed in psychology

    In his column this month Sheldon Litt discusses some of the techniques that he has found to help people become more creative. He outlines some of the major obstacles to creativity. ...

  22. More on Existential Philosophy and Modern Psychotherapy

    Listed in holistic psychotherapy

    In an earlier issue of Positive Health (Issue 40, May 1999) the influence of existentialism on modern psychology was discussed. Here we will continue this discussion, looking at bot...

  23. Headaches: Part II

    Listed in headaches

    In the last issue of Positive Health (Issue 41), the problem of headaches was discussed from the Gestalt Therapy standpoint.

  24. Headaches

    Listed in headaches

    Dr Litt column this month concerns headaches and what Gestalt Therapists do to treat them. Most patients prefer to remain passive and expect their practitioner to provide a miracle ...

  25. The Impact of Existential Philosophy on Modern Psychology

    Listed in psychology

    It is now some 50 years since existentialism swept through the salons of European intellectual life. Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980) may be considered one of the leaders of the existen...

  26. What is 'gestalt' about Gestalt Therapy?

    Listed in psychology

    My article on Fritz Perls and Gestalt Therapy (P.H. 34, Nov. 98) raised questions from readers who wanted to know more about the origins of gestalt therapy and its relation to the e...

  27. Some Unwritten Laws of Psychology

    Listed in psychology

    The heavy psychology textbooks on my shelves contain some well-known laws: the law of effect, the Weber-Fechner law, the principle of just noticeable difference, etc. But here we wi...

  28. Communication Styles

    Listed in holistic psychotherapy

    Working as a psychotherapist brings one into contact with various styles of speech patterns. Many of these are habitual ways of disturbed communicating.

  29. Women - Why do they put up with abuse?

    Listed in holistic psychotherapy

    Although I have worked as a psychotherapist for more than 30 years, I must admit that there are many things about women that I just do not understand. Many of my patients are women ...

  30. To Lie or not to Lie

    Listed in holistic psychotherapy

    Today column comes from a discussion I had recently with an acquaintance, let us call him Herbert. Now Herb is very much in love with a wonderful woman, but despite that, he still s...

  31. Fritz Perls and Gestalt Therapy

    Listed in holistic psychotherapy

    Gestalt therapy was originated about fifty years ago by Frederick Fritz Perls (1893-1970) in collaboration with Paul Goodman.

  32. Frederick: A Sort of Love Story

    Listed in holistic psychotherapy

    Today I turn to a poignant and complicated issue: my friend Frederick and his lovesickness. He suffers from one of the most painful forms of love distress – unrequited love. ...

  33. Human Relations (Part II)

    Listed in holistic psychotherapy

    In the last issue of PH (31), we looked at a paradigm of different types of human relations based on the Gestalt Therapy method of Frederick Fritz Perls (1893-1970). The first two t...

  34. Human Relationships

    Listed in holistic psychotherapy

    Gestalt therapy carries an existential message about human relationships. Perls epigrammatic statement of his ethic of interaction is contained in this little verse: I do my thing, ...

  35. Psychotherapy as a Humane Discipline (A paradigm for therapists)

    Listed in holistic psychotherapy

    Many psychotherapists are uncertain about their values and confused about the general values of psychotherapy.

  36. Depression

    Listed in depression

    My dictionary defines depression as: an emotional state of mind characterised by feelings of gloom and inadequacy, leading to withdrawal. This is the usual description of a patholog...

  37. Fate

    Listed in psychospiritual

    I was involved recently in an academic discussion on the place of fate in human life. I was surprised that there were so many people there who defended the passive interpretation, c...

  38. The Psychology of Money 2 - More on Money

    Listed in psychology

    I knew it, I expected it. My last article in Positive Health on money, that perennially popular topic, aroused lots of interest and responses from readers. People, as I suggested, a...

  39. The Psychology of Money

    Listed in psychology

    We are all very interested in money, but not many of us understand it. There are several new books on the market now trying to explain this complicated and highly emotional subject,...

  40. The Psychology of Art (II)

    Listed in psychology

    Starting from the perspective of William Blake Energy is eternal delight, this article is a theoretical speculation on the origin of artistic creativity which expands psychological ...

  41. The Psychology of Art (I)

    Listed in psychology

    Ever since Freud first ventured into the problems of creativity, psychoanalysis has stressed the darker, negative aspects of art. Plato, long ago, noted that the artist was divinely...

  42. Dreams (II); Nightmares, Daydreams

    Listed in psychology

    A number of readers contacted me to ask about recurrent dreams and especially nightmares. In any discussion of dreams and related topics, I am often asked about daydreaming. These a...

  43. Answers to Readers and Speculations on Space

    Listed in psychology

    I have had several responses to my recent article in Positive Health on Psychological Cloning (Positive Health Issue 20, June/July 1997). Most of these correspondents were curious a...

  44. Dreams & Dreamwork

    Listed in psychospiritual

    Man has speculated about the meaning of dreams since the beginning of time. Perhaps, back in the prehistoric caves, images appearing to people in dreams were the origin of the conce...

  45. Psychological Cloning

    Listed in psychology

    Dolly the smiling sheep has her fetching photo on the front page of almost every newspaper I have seen recently, and the usual media pundits are discussing cloning everywhere I look...

  46. The Psychologist's Fallacy - and other pitfalls

    Listed in holistic psychotherapy

    Today we will look at some common fallacies or misconstructions found in the general area of psychology/ psychotherapy. The most common myth, as I see it - and many are prone to thi...

Book reviews by Sheldon Litt, Ph.D.

  1. Blood Washing Blood - A Zen Perspective of Psychotherapy

    Listed in psychotherapy

  2. Honoring the Body: One's Home is One's Body

    Listed in mind body

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