Howard has been working with children, adolescents, adults and athletes for over thirty years as a Clinical Psychologist in the Montreal area. He founded the Applied Learning Center in 1982. He has extensive experience helping individuals with issues such as anxiety, depression, personal and family difficulties, and performance-related issues in athletes. His basic approach is pragmatic in that he works with his clients to help them develop a better understanding of the reasons responsible for causing them to feel poorly, and more importantly, to develop strategies that will have a long-lasting, positive effect on their lives. He achieves these goals by building a trusting environment and by implementing different cognitive and behavioral techniques whereby individuals learn how to be more effective and independent in dealing with their difficulties. Simply stated, one of his main objectives is to determine how and what needs to be done to make each day better than the previous one.

Howard has also had over twenty-five years working with elite and professional athletes and teams in various sports, helping them develop effective strategies to increase their focus and performance. Using current cognitive strategies, the athletes develop techniques to “block out” thoughts and emotions that interfere with and compromise their performance. He teaches them to focus on how to perform their athletic “job” to the best of their athletic abilities, which invariably has a positive effect on the desired outcome.

Regardless of the issues that an individual encounters, the chances of success are directly related to how the individual feels while in therapy. Howard stresses the creation of a warm, nurturing environment in which to work. He does not believe in the “No Pain-No Gain” theory; rather, he believes that self-esteem and confidence-building are essential elements of the process of working through most difficulties as well as creating realistic, positive and long-term solutions.

Email: howardschwartz@appliedlearningcenter.com