Giving Psychology Away
A Personal Journey
Robert Epstein
Cambridge Center for Behavioral
Studies, Concord, Massachusetts; University of
California, San Diego; and Psychology
Today, New York, New York
ABSTRACTIn this autobiographical essay, I trace the
origins
of my passion for communicating with the public
about mental health and the behavioral sciences and make
a case for spreading such passion among psychologists. I
also describe the circuitous route that led to my
unlikely
4-year tenure as editor-in-chief of Psychology
Today
magazine and describe some of the inner workings of this
New Yorkbased, commercial enterpriseformerly
the
property of the American Psychological Association. I
made some progress in that role to return the magazine to
its scientific origins, providing an outlet for hundreds
of
scientists and practitioners to speak directly to
millions of
Americans about their work. This is an essential task, I
argue, if our field is to flourish. I also detail my
departure
as editor-in-chief of Psychology
Today
and describe the
magazines rapid return to
popstatus. Media sources do
not automatically welcome participation by clinicians or
behavioral scientists. Through a contingency analysis, I
suggest ways of improving our ability to interface
successfully
with media professionals.
I can imagine nothing we could do that would be more
relevant to
human welfare, and nothing that could pose a greater
challenge
to the next generation of psychologists, than to discover
how best to
give psychology away. (Miller, 1969a, p. 74)
As a college student in the early 1970s, I felt I had a
religious
calling. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, I suppose
nearly
every young American had a calling of some sort. Mine, I
thought, was from Godalthough I was not sure that
God existed.
In this essay, I talk about the odd journey upon which
this
calling has taken me, complete with brief stops at
Harvard
University, the Cambridge Center for Behavioral Studies,
Readers Digest, the White House, several radio
programs, and,
most notably, Psychology Today magazine. Along the way, I
talk
about some contingencies of
reinforcement and punishment that
allow us as professionals to educate, or that prevent us
as professionals
from educating, the public about mental health and
the behavioral sciences. But first, back to God.
The calling came in my late teens, and I interpreted it
to mean
that I was supposed to become a rabbi. So immediately
upon
graduating from college at age 20, I sold almost
everything I had
and, under a program run by the Hebrew Union College
(HUC), a
Reform rabbinical school in New York, I left for Israel.
The HUC
program proved to be too lightweight for my religious
leanings,
so I soon left it to stay in an Orthodox religious
academy, a
yeshiva, in Jerusalem, where I spent 11 hours a day in
prayer and
study. It was an extraordinary experience, for which I
was not
entirely well suited. For one thing, I kept questioning
the rabbis
and my fellow students about exactly where our prayers
were
going, and I also occasionally disappeared into the city
to binge
on nonkosher food.
After 6 months in Israel, I reinterpreted my calling,
concluding
that I was not supposed to be a rabbi, but that I was
supposed to
help people. I had been a psychology major in college,
and I was
also an ardent Skinnerian. I had brought my copy of
Science and
Human Behavior (Skinner, 1953) with me to the yeshiva,
and I
had more faith in Skinners book than I did in my
siddur. So,
ultimately, I left Israel, determined to make
significant and
lasting contributions to
humankindactual words from my
notes at the timethrough a career in psychology.
When I returned from Israel in early 1975, I wrote at
length
about how I planned to fulfill my calling. In a blue
loose-leaf
notebook, I made grand plans about how I was going to get
the
best training I could in psychology and then make the
world a
better place by spreading the word about the scientific
understanding
of behavior and its possible applications. My focus,
I thought, would be self-management. A number of books on
behavioral self-management were published in the early
and
mid 1970s (e.g., Goldfried & Merbaum, 1973; Kanfer
&
Goldstein, 1975; Mahoney & Thoresen, 1974; Stuart,
1977;
Thoresen & Mahoney, 1974; Watson & Tharp, 1972;
Williams
& Long, 1975), and I had studied every one. I was
also involved
in a modest research project on
this topic that was eventually
published in Behavior Therapy (Epstein & Goss, 1978).
In addition,
I had collected every book, article, and scrap of paper
that Skinner had ever published. I even owned copies of
all of his
patents and of the abstracts he had published in
Psychological
Abstracts when he was a graduate student at Harvard in
the late
1920s. I was, to use Hoffers (1951) term, a
true believer
with, it seems, some compulsive tendencies.
In the spring of 1975, at age 21, I gave a formal
presentation
about my plans to the scholar who had mentored me during
my
college days: William Mace, an ecological psychologist
who was
then chair of the psychology department at Trinity
College in
Connecticut. I even brought snacks and a selection of
drinks for
him to consume as I lectured to him from his own
blackboard. He
listened patiently and never laughed once, undoubtedly
fighting
his natural inclinations.1
In the fall of 1976, I entered a masters program in
Maryland,
where I learned about the experimental analysis of
behavior
from A. Charles Catania, one of Skinners most
prominent students,
and where I learned about applied behavior analysis from
Richard Foxx, a pioneer in that field who had worked
closely
with Nathan Azrin, also a prominent student of
Skinners. In
addition to working in Catanias pigeon lab, I
worked with Jacob
Gewirtz of the National Institute of Mental Health on
behavioral
research he was conducting with human infants. I was off
to a
good start.
CAMBRIDGE
That year I also corresponded with and then visited
Skinner, first
at his home and then at his office. When he showed me
around
his basement study, I brashly told him what was on the
walls and
shelves, and once or twice I completed his sentences for
him.
Then age 74 and retired, Skinner was visibly shaken by my
forward manner, but he was also impressed by my passion
and
my knowledge of his work. He asked me to do some editing
on
the autobiography he was writing, and, ultimately, he
suggested
that I work with him the following summer. Our
interactions,
which I have written about previously, were intense and
highly
productive (Epstein, 1980, 1982, 1987, 1991, 1996b,
1997c,
1997d; Epstein, Lanza, & Skinner, 1980, 1981; Epstein
&
Skinner, 1980, 1981; Willard & Epstein, 1980).
Among other things, I convinced
Fred, as he insisted
on being called, to conduct research again; he had
abandoned
his pigeon laboratory nearly two decades before. Some
of our laboratory work was eventually captured in a
classroom
film that was cited as the best new educational film of
the
year by the American Psychological Association (APA) in
1982 (Baxley, 1982). By the end of the summer of 1977,
I was invited to be a full-time graduate student at
Harvard,
in the same program that Skinner had entered 50 years
prior.
I never told anyone at Harvard about my calling, but I
was
clearly on a mission. By the end of my 4 years there, I
had 21
publications either in print or in press, and I also gave
an invited
address about the Columban Simulation
Projecta series of
pigeon simulations of complex
human behaviorat the APA
convention in Montreal in 1980. To the consternation of
my
fellow graduate students, I was excused from having to
write a
dissertation. The department chair simply called me into
his
office one day and advised me to staple some
of your publications
together and get out while you still
cana message
I did not find entirely encouraging.
I also got married and had two sons during my graduate-
student years. One highlight: Skinner, who apparently did
not
have the good sense to look away at the right moment,
fainted at
my younger sons circumcision ceremony. After the
procedure
was complete, the rabbi who had done the
cuttingspeaking
with a heavy Yiddish accent, no lesssurprised the
assembled
group with a lengthy sermon about how my wife and I were
supposed to raise our new son in programmed
steps using
positive reinforcement. Skinner, seated on a
nearby sofa and
conscious but still weak at this point, nodded repeatedly
in
agreement, undoubtedly thinking he had died and gone to
Heaven. (I learned later that the rabbi had read about
Skinners
work while in rabbinical college in the 1950s. He had
planned to
write a programmed text to teach the Talmud but had never
gotten around to doing so. When he walked into my
apartment
and saw the elderly man, he asked someone who the man
was,
thinking he might be the new babys grandfather. He
was
shocked to learn that the man was Skinner, and he later
shocked
everyone else with his Skinnerian sermon.)
Around the time I completed my degree, I founded an
advanced-
studies institute called the Cambridge Center for
Behavioral
Studies, dedicated to advancing the study of
behavior
and its humane applications in the solution to practical
problems
and the prevention and relief of human
suffering. While
teaching and conducting research part-time, I then spent
9 years
as the centers executive director. Skinner had
objected strongly
to my taking this route, telling me that administrative
work was
a complete waste of time, but I
was on a mission, and I thought
I could have more impact through a new institute than
through
classroom lectures.2
After leaving the Cambridge Center for Behavioral Studies
in
1990, I started writing in earnest for national magazines
and
newspapersamong them, Readers Digest, which
had a readership
of more than 100 million. I also began doing small on-air
segments about behavior for the Voice of America and
National
Public Radio. I was looking for new venues through which
I could communicate with the
general public about behavior.
Could I find ways to package the behavioral sciences so
that
people might enjoy what they were learning? More
important,
could I develop platforms that would allow other
behavioral
scientists and practitioners to talk to the public in
effective ways
on a regular basis?
I spent long hours trying to figure out how to get people
in the
national media to help me fulfill my mission, which, for
some
reason, they were seldom inclined to do. I had helped to
create
and was directing an annual contest of artificial
intelligence, the
Loebner Prize Competition (Epstein, 1992), and that gave
me
some good media contacts. The contest got first-page
coverage in
The New York Times in 1990 and over the next couple of
years
was picked up by hundreds of media outlets, including CNN
and
PBS. I exploited these contacts vigorously in my attempts
to talk
to the public about behavior. I also spent several years
courting
people in the Hollywood area. Psychology, I thought,
should
have its own daily television show, and I was able more
than once
to convince writers and producers to put proposals
together and
shop them around to the studios. There were a number of
close
calls, and promises were made, but no show appeared.
Hollywood
is a tough town that I am still trying to crack. The
national
media can be frustrating, for sure. After a while,
though, I did
have some success with a relatively venerableor, I
should say,
formerly venerablemagazine.
PSYCHOLOGY TODAY
Psychology Today is only one step
removed from Skinners pigeon
laboratory. It was founded in 1967 by George Reynolds, a
behavioral psychologist who got his doctorate under
Skinner;
Nicholas Charney, one of Reynoldss graduate
students; and
Winslow Marston, a childhood friend of Charneys. It
was intended
to be the Scientific American of the behavioral sciences,
packaging these little-known sciences in terms the
educated
public could understand and enjoy. By 1975, it had a
subscription
base of 1.2 million and a readership of perhaps 10
million, which made it one of the most popular magazines
in the
United States.
Skinner got ample coverage in the new magazine; that
should
come as no surprise, given both Skinners prominence
and the
magazines origins. The August 1971 issue excerpted
most of
Skinners best-selling book Beyond Freedom and
Dignity; the
nearly unreadable psychedelic cover dispensed with the
usual
cover photo and included, in large type, no text other
than
Psychology Today/B. F. Skinner/Beyond Freedom
and Dignity.
The magazine published portions of Skinners
multivolume
autobiography (Skinner, 1979, 1983), as well as original
articles he wrote (Skinner, 1969, 1977), extensive
interviews
with him (E. Hall, 1972; M.H. Hall, 1967b; Yergin, 1979),
and
excerpts from one of his books (Skinner, 1981).
But Skinner was not the only prominent thinker featured
in
the magazine. In its early years, Psychology Today was a
veri-
table Whos Who of the behavioral sciences,3 and
because of its
visibility, the magazine also gave major career boosts to
many
young unknown psychologists. Memory researcher Elizabeth
Loftus, for example, has long credited her public fame to
a 1974
article she published in Psychology Today about her
successful
effort to assist a public defender in a murder case
(Loftus, 1974;
Loftus & Ketcham, 1991). When the American
Psychologist
announced her receipt of a major award in 2003, the
accompanying
text reported that after the Psychology Today article
appeared,
her life would never be the same. The circulation of the
magazine
was nearly a million [actually substantially higher] and
was read
by many lawyers and judges. The phone started ringing off
the
hook . . . and the next few decades of her life would be
filled with
scientific discoveries and legal cases, intermixed and
interwoven.
(Elizabeth F. Loftus, 2003, p.
865)
In the mid 1970s, a survey published in an academic
journal identified Psychology Today as one of the top six
periodicals
in which psychologists hoped to publish (out of 100
journals included in the survey), not far behind
Psychological
Review and the American Psychologist (Koulack &
Keselman,
1975).
Success often leads to ruin, and such was the case with
Psychology Today. Because of its large circulation, the
magazines
founders made a fair amount of money in the 1970s
by selling the magazine to Boise-Cascade, a large paper
company, which then sold the magazine to Ziff-Davis, a
large
New York publishing company. Executives there thought
they
could grow the magazine even further by
popularizing it.
T. George Harris, the charismatic, psychology-loving
editorin-
chief who had lifted the magazine to its height, was
fired,
and psychologists Paul Chance and Carol Tavris left soon
afterward. The content began to soften, and the decline
began.
As Smith and Schroeder noted in a 1980 content analysis
of
the magazines performance in the late 1970s, both
the empirical
content of the magazine and the proportion of articles
written by psychologists were dropping fast; as it
happens, so
was the circulation.
In the early 1980s, in a somewhat
secret, multi-million-dollar
deal, Psychology Today was purchased by APA (Kimble,
1995).
APA has a mission, too, and part of that mission is to
give
psychology away to the general public
(Miller, 1969a, 1969b;
Zimbardo, 2004). But the APA leadership had miscalculated
on
several fronts. Many members of the organization were
outraged
at the immensity of the investment that had been made
without
their knowledge or consent, as well as by the fact that
most of the
magazines revenues came from cigarette and liquor
ads. A 1988
report suggested that there was little
support for publishing
the magazine among the general membership (Pion et al.,
1988,
p. 1044), even though the quality of the content of the
magazine
under APAs ownership was considerably stronger than
it had
been under Ziff-Davis. APA sold Psychology Today in the
late
1980s at a loss of about $16 million, forcing the
organization to
sell its buildings in Washington, DC, in order to avoid
bankruptcy
(Five-Year Report, 1991; Kimble,
1995).
For a year or two, Psychology Today ceased to exist,
until
it was finally purchased in 1991 by a small New York
company called Sussex Publishing, which was making its
way
by resuscitating needy but respectable magazines such as
Mother Earth News and Spy. Sussex made the magazine
profitable
by keeping operating costs low and developing new
advertising markets, mainly in the natural-health
industry. But
the content was largely pop, and
APAs bad experience kept
the magazine isolated from the profession that it
purported to
represent.
In 1995, I published a short article in Psychology Today
about
Skinners baby box (Epstein
& Bailey, 1995), marking the
50th year since the publication of his article about the
aircrib in
the Ladies Home Journal (Skinner, 1945). My article
summarized
the results of a survey in which graduate student Shelly
Bailey and I traced aircrib usage with about 50 children.
The
rumors notwithstanding, the survey showed that the baby
box
was in all respects an excellent crib.
Psychology Todays reputation was not strong in
1995, but I
started making regular trips to New York to try to build
relationships
there. In 1996, I published a feature article called
Capturing Creativity, which was
about some of my laboratory
research (Epstein, 1996a), and I was also made a
contributing
editorwhich meant little more than that
I got my name on the
masthead. In 1997, I published two more feature articles
in
Psychology Today (Epstein, 1997a, 1997b) and continued my
visits to New York.
In 1998, I was approached by a salesman from a talk-radio
station who said that for a mere $3,500, he would put me
on
the air an hour a week for 3 months in Providence, Rhode
Island. All I needed was a telephone, he saidand
$3,500. He
also said he would get lots of advertisers for the show
and that,
ultimately, I would make money by splitting the
advertising
revenues. This was a scam, but I did not know it. Most
people on
talk radio pay to be on the airsometimes because
they are
drawn in by unscrupulous salespeople and sometimes to
satisfy
their egos, but usually because they have something to
sell. In
any case, I told John P. Jo
Colman, at that time the principal
shareholder of Sussex Publishing, about the offer and
suggested
that we call the show Psychology Today
Live in order to help
market the magazine. He wanted to sell subscriptions, so
he
agreed to pay $2,500 of the required amount, and I paid
the
balance.
Now I had a show, but it was not clear that I had any
listeners. Each week, students and interns came to my
house
in San Diego, and I called in to Providence to do the
live
program. My helpers spent most of their time calling in
to
the show from a second line in another room in my house,
pretending
to be Providence residents who were just dying to learn
about psychology. Over the 3-month period, I think I got
three
real callers, and Colman figured he got 12 subscriptions.
But I
also got some good experience doing talk radio, and I had
done
some bonding with Colman, albeit through a failed
business
venture.
In March of 1999, I learned that Anastasia Toufexis, then
editor-in-chief of Psychology Today, was thinking of
leaving. She
was a career journalist who had previously been the
behavior
editor at TIME magazine. Psychology Today was a
bare-bones
operation compared with TIME and other magazines with
which
she had worked, and she was getting frustrated by the
lack of
resources. In particular, she did not like the fact that
her editorial
budget was too small to provide adequate compensation
for the journalists and professional writers who were
writing
most of her articles. A little contingency-driven
lightbulb went
off in my head. I called Colman and suggested that I
become the
next editor-in-chief. No, I knew nothing about magazine
production,
and no, I knew nothing about journalism, and no, I knew
nothing about art or layout, but I just knew I could do
the job. He
laughed.
But then I started talking about money. I told Colman
that I
could reduce editorial costs while upgrading the content
of the
magazine, improving its reputation, and restoring its
ties to
mental health professionalswhich, I said, could
mean a large
number of new subscriptions. I would do this, I said, by
going
back to the original Psychology Today model, the one that
had
led to its great success in the 1960s and 1970s: I would
have
psychologists once again write most of the pieces, using
professional
writers to rewrite and edit as needed. Psychologists are
accustomed to writing for nothing, I said, so we would
not have to
pay them much, and the rewriting could be done
inexpensively
using in-house staff and freelancers. By getting top
psychologists
back on our pages, I said, we would gradually improve the
prestige of the magazine, and we would also reestablish
ties with
APA and other professional organizations. The magazine
would
get back into classrooms and waiting rooms, and Colman, I
said,
would make more money.
In April of 1999, I became the first nonjournalist
editorin-
chief of Psychology Today, and my first issue was printed
in August. Psychologist David Elkins of Pepperdine
University
wrote our cover story on spirituality (Elkins, 1999), and
we
put Madonna on the cover because at the time she was
studying
KaballahJewish mysticismin Los Angeles. The
cover
was far-fetched, but the issue sold well, and Colman was
encouraged.
When APA owned Psychology Today, a supervisory committee
headed by psychologist Gregory Kimble exercised strong,
if not
total, control over every aspect of the magazines
content,
including advertising (G. Kimble, personal communication,
October 14, 2005), but my own control was limited. In
fact, the
experience of running the magazine, especially during the
production of my first few issues, was nightmarish, in
part because
I chose to run the magazine from San Diego (the
headquarters
was in New York), in part because I was not a journalist,
and in part because I was the only psychologist on the
staff of
Psychology Today. Among other
problems, I was unprepared
for the brutal way staff members sometimes treated each
other
(and me), and I could not understand why important prose
was
constantly being cut to make way for preposterous
art or ads
for breast enhancers.
Over the first 6 months or so of my editorship, I
learned,
gradually and painfully, about a set of contingencies,
rules, and
practices of which I had been completely unaware before
coming to Psychology Today. Here are a few:
.
Local organizational culture is always important, and it
turns
out that it is not uncommon in the culture of New York
journalists
for people to insult, yell at, and abuse each other
especially near the close of an issue.
.
Journalists are trained to reduce beautiful, distinctive,
sophisticated
prose down to Steinbeckian minibites, even if the
prose comes from someone of great standingsay, the
surgeon
general of the United States.
.
The sales, art, and editorial departments of a magazine
are in
constant competition with each other. Space is always
precious
because of the financial contingencies that govern
printing and distribution, and because adssolicited
by the
sales staffbring in most of the revenues, they tend
to take up
as much space as they need. Meanwhile, whereas writers
and
editors want to see every one of their words in print,
the art
director is determined to fill the pages with large
drawings and
photos; a magazine, I was told, must be
aesthetically
appealing or the public will not buy it. In
other words, the
behaviors of sales, art, and editorial professionals are
governed respectively by conflicting contingencies of
reinforcement.
.
In theory, the editor-in-chief gets final say over
the edit, that
is, the textual matter in all of the articles, but the
sheer volume
of content makes it impossible for the editor-in-chief to
have
complete control, and smart, ambitious staff journalists
do not
like to be micromanaged. What is more, the
publisherthe
one with the checkbookoccasionally expresses an
opinion,
sometimes causing complete chaos.
PROGRESS
Having provided some context, I summarizewith, I
admit, no
small degree of pridehow Psychology Today changed
between
1999 and 2003:
.
Advisory board: To try to reconnect the magazine with
psychology
proper, we established an advisory board consisting
of some of the fields most distinguished
individuals, and
several members of the board proved to be especially
active in
trying to improve the magazine.4
.
Circulation: To boost and stabilize newsstand sales and
improve
the image of the magazine, we began routinely putting
top celebrities on our covers, struggling sometimes to
find
legitimate reasons for having them there. During my
tenure,
we maintained a circulation of about 350,000a
respectable
number, given that magazines in general were declining
(especially
after the attack on September 11, 2001), and major
magazines like George and Mademoiselle were being forced
out of business. That circulation put Psychology Today on
a
par with The Atlantic Monthly and
Harpersabout 100,000
subscribers behind the former and 100,000 ahead of the
latter. Consumer subscriptions, newsstand sales, library
subscriptions (high for a commercial magazine),
waiting-room
placements, and pass-arounds gave
us a readership of well
over 3 million.
.
Testing: I am a researcher by background, and I have also
taught courses on research methods on and off over the
years,
so I suggested that we test cover images before going to
press.
Covers at Psychology Today used to be selected by
shouting
matches, but we were using street and on-line surveys to
determine which images and headlines potential buyers and
subscribers preferred.
.
Minds Eye: Most issues began with a photo of
intriguing
people, along with a commentary by a prominent therapist
in a
feature called the Minds Eye.
.
Editorial: I wrote a substantive, fairly serious
editorial for
every issue, such as one titled Physiologist
Laura: Shes Not a
Psychologist and We Dont Want Her
(Epstein, 2001a), an
attack on radio personality Laura Schlessinger.
.
Informational column: In each issue, we ran a
question-andanswer
columnAsk Dr. Ein which I tried to inform and
educate, rather than give advice.
.
Authorship: The biggest change was our shift away from
journalists. During my tenure, most of our feature
articles
were written by distinguished scientists and therapists,
sometimes with the help of professional writers, and
other
prominent psychologists appeared in interviews.5 One very
successful article we published was a parenting piece by
psychologists Jacob Azerrad and Paul Chance (2001), which
even included a graph of a single-subject reversal
design
not something one sees very often in national magazines.
In
one of several articles that nearly got me fired,
pioneering
psychiatrist Loren Mosher (1999) criticized the American
Psychiatric Association for its close ties with the
pharmaceutical
industry, and Senator Arlen Specter was one of many
high-ranking government officials who had opened their
doors
to us (Specter, 2000). We also were the first publication
to
publish an advanced copy of the executive summary of the
new Surgeon Generals Report on Mental Health
(Satcher,
2000).
.
Readings: To aid students and serious readers, we ended
every feature with a short list of suggested readings.
.
Heads Up: To reconnect with the profession, as well as to
help and entertain readers, we started a department
called
Heads Up, in which the presidents of national
organizations
answered a question of interest to the general public,
such
as How can we stop school
violence? or Should you
punish your child? Participating
organizations included
APA, the American Psychological Society (APS; now the
Association for Psychological Science), the American
Psychiatric Association, the American Counseling
Association,
the National Association of Social Workers, and the
Association for the Advancement of Behavior Therapy,
among
others.
.
News: The news section of the magazineusually 12
pages,
with more than 20 short articlessummarized recent
research
studies in lay terms, and the staff took great pains to
avoid interpreting correlational studies in causal terms.
.
Health psychology: We established a Health Psych column,
edited for a while by psychologist H. Melbourne Hovell,
founder and director of the Center for Behavioral
Epidemiology
at San Diego State University.
.
Cutting-edge research: We also created a Frontiers
department,
which featured interviews with scientists conducting
leading-edge research; this column was edited by APA
senior
scientist Nancy Dess for nearly 2 years and then,
briefly, by
Kurt Salzinger, the new director of APAs Science
Directorate
and former chair of the board of trustees of the
Cambridge
Center for Behavioral Studies. Salzinger was succeeded by
Susan K. Fiske, a professor at Princeton and former
president
of APS.
B. Stuart (2002); and Philip Zimbardo (Maslach, 2000).
.
Book and Web reviews: Our new book and Web reviews
section
was edited by Chance, who also wrote occasional features
for
us. We brought him back to Psychology Today after a long
hiatus, and he was a tremendous asset.
.
Langer column: We also ran a regular commentary, Just
Think
About It, by Harvard social psychologist Ellen Langer,
who
brought her distinctive perspective to many everyday
topics.
.
History page: We concluded most issues with a historical
photo supplied by the Archives of the History of American
Psychology.
.
My Story: To connect in a meaningful way with people
dealing
with behavioral, cognitive, and emotional disorders, we
began
a department called My Story, in which a reader told
about his
or her experience with depression, bipolar disorder, a
phobia,
or some other debilitating problem. In one of the first
columns
of this sort, a reader provided a meticulous and
disturbing
account of what it had been like for her to undergo
electroconvulsive
therapy. In another issue, actor Christopher Reeve
gave a moving account of his struggle to regain
functioning
after sustaining a spinal cord injury.
.
Mental health awards: In 2000, Psychology Today began
giving annual awards to people who helped improve the
mental health of Americans. Nominations in eight
different
categoriesgovernment, media, research, and so
onwere
invited each year from 300 leaders in mental health and
the
behavioral sciences nationwide, and recipients included
Tipper Gore, Rosalynn Carter, Fred Rogers, and Albert
Ellis,
among others, both notables and unknowns. For the first
round of awards, we printed a congratulatory letter from
President Bill Clinton.
.
National radio show: Somewhere along the way, I also got
Psychology Today Live, my radio
program, onto the national
airwaves. This program allowed me to put nearly 200
distinguished
guests on the air over a period of about 2 years.6
On one of the occasions when David Satcher appeared on
Psychology Today Live, I
complimented him on the unprecedented
efforts he was making to address the mental health
problems of Americans. He replied, with great warmth and
to my
complete surprise, I have great appreciation
for the work that
you do, and I think youre reaching a lot of people
through the
magazine and your program. Keep it up! We need
you! Faced
with an endless barrage of deadlines from the magazine,
the
radio program, and my professorship, and not having taken
a day
off in years, I felt more fatigued than appreciated, but
signs that
my efforts were paying off were indeed appearing.
In 1999, the magazine was invited to participate in the
White
House Conference on Mental Health, organized by Tipper
Gore,
who later agreed to be interviewed for the magazine and
radio
program (she holds two degrees in psychology, after all).
In 2002,
I was invited to talk about the magazines progress
at APAs
annual meeting, and that fall Rhea Farberman, APAs
publicity
director, and Norman Anderson, APAs incoming chief
executive
officer, dropped by Psychology Todays office in New
York to
check out our operation. Also in 2002, an empirical
report in a
volume on teaching suggested that Psychology Today
articles
were helpful in motivating students in introductory
psychology
courses (Appleby, 2002). We were also getting regular
invitations
to attend events at the Carter Center, where former first
lady Rosalynn Carter had long run an ambitious program to
make the mental health needs of Americans a high priority
for
media professionals and government officials; both
Carters appeared
on the radio program and in the magazine.
Changes in the magazine were also getting noticed in the
media. Articles about our new direction appeared in both
Science
and The Chronicle of Higher Education early in 1999, and
included hopeful but cautious comments from Alan Kraut,
director
of APS, and APA president Richard Suinn
(Psychology
Today, Long Ignored, 1999; Rehab
for Psychology Mag,
1999). And a lengthy article in a January 2000 issue of
The
Baltimore Sun, titled Serious Therapy for a
Magazine, read in
part as follows:
After 25 years of sliding circulation, creeping inanity
and dwindling
respect, Psychology Today is undergoing sober analysis .
. ..
For the third time, Psychology Today will make a run at
giving
psychology away. Its editor has pledged to
reassert the voice of
authority over the bubble-headed
gurus and vacuous self-help
books that he says have tarnished the
profession. It may sound
like the kind of talk more likely to emanate from a
graduate-school
lounge than from a New York publishers suite. But
scholars are
optimistic.
Psychology has an image problem,
says Gregory Kimble,
emeritus professor of psychology at Duke University and
one of the
new advisors. Psychology Today can help to
correct it. (Dorsey,
2000, p. 2)
Although the feedback I was receiving was generally
positive,
I did run into trouble at one point with some gay
activists. In its
November/December 2002 issue, the magazine ran a small ad
for a new book titled A Parents Guide to Preventing
Homosexuality
(Nicolosi & Nicolosi, 2002). Shortly after the issue
came out, I received an angry phone call from an APA
member
who identified herself as a lesbian activist and who
strongly
objected to the ad. I assured her that I had nothing to
do with the
magazines sales department and that I was confident
readers
could tell the difference between editorial content and
paid
advertisements, but she was far from satisfied. I soon
found
myself flooded by angry e-mails, many from people who
said they
were canceling their subscriptionseven though,
according to
our records, some were not subscribers. Some people even
protested the magazines antigay
article. I settled the matter, it
seems, to almost everyones satisfaction with a long
editorial
titled Am I Anti-Gay? in which,
among other things, I reviewed
evidence suggesting that homosexuality is partly genetic
in origin (Epstein, 2003a).
By early 2000, Psychology Today magazine was empirically
based from cover to cover, delivering valuable and
credible
information to the American public. It provided a
platform
for prominent, credentialed scientists and practitioners
to
communicate directly with a large audience, and some key
people had noticed and praised the changes. Those signs I
was
perpetually seekingsigns that I was making a
contribution
were now glowing brightly, but one of them, it turns out,
read
stop.
ABRUPT END OF A BRIEF ERA
On a Monday morning in March of 2003, the publisher of
Psychology Today called to inform me that he was
replacing
methat very minute, it seemedwith my
27-year-old
news editor, a bright, energetic journalist with no
background
in the behavioral sciences but with a salary much lower
than mine. I would now have the honorary title
West Coast
Editor.
By this time, I was expendable. In 1999, I had marketed
myself by promising both cost cutting and new revenues. I
had
indeed kept costs low, but my fantasies about new revenue
sources had proved to be just that. I had thought that by
improving
the credibility and prestige of the magazine, I could
create connections between the magazine and various
segments
of the academic and mental health communities, which
would in
turn generate more income for the magazine. But a
collection of
classic Psychology Today articles I edited for classroom
use in
1999 (Epstein, 1999) sold poorly over the next couple of
years,
and we had no indication that students were interested in
the
newly renovated magazine.
Moreover, various proposals I had made to APA and other
organizations (including APS) for distributing the
magazine to
their members had gone nowhere. Some APA officials had
been
around during the dark years when Psychology Today had
nearly
bankrupted the organization; the mere mention of the
magazine
raised hackles. Ray Fowler, APAs executive
director, also
pointed out that no matter how good the editorial
content, the
magazines ads would undoubtedly stir protests from
among the
organizations many contentious and passionate
factions. Pressure
to abandon lucrative ads had helped sink the magazine
when APA owned it during the 1980s, and I had had a taste
of
this kind of trouble over a small book advertisement.
RICHES TO RAG
The June 2003 issue of Psychology
Today was my farewell issue
as editor-in-chief. It featured actress Susan Sarandon on
the
cover, focusing on her political activism. A supporting
article
sought to spell out the conditions that turn people into
activists.
The issue also included a provocative article about the
Bush
administrations color-coded warning system; titled
Phantom
Menace: Is Washington Terrorizing Us More Than Al
Qaeda? it
was written by then APA president Philip Zimbardo
(Zimbardo,
2003). My editorial, Of Ants and Men: The
Lust for War,
mourned the 175 million people who had been lost to war
during
the 20th century and listed some of the factors that
behavioral
scientists say contribute to the warlike tendencies of
human
beings (Epstein, 2003b). What happened next is not
pretty, at
least if you have a genuine interest in educating and
helping the
public.
The Sarandon issue of Psychology Today, the last over
which I
had any influence, was followed by one with cartoon
characters
Homer and Marge Simpson on the cover. Almost overnight,
the
complex apparatus I had assembled to connect the magazine
to
the behavioral sciences was dismantled: The advisory
board
evaporated, and so did the history page, Heads Up,
Frontiers,
My Story, the informational question-and-answer column,
and so
on. The venerable Psychology Today Interview, a staple
since
the magazine was founded, was also eliminated, because
interviews,
I was told, were boring.
The main change had to do with the authorship of
articles.
Psychologists were eliminated, replaced by freelance
journalists.
In 2002, 83 credentialed clinicians and scientists
contributed
original material to Psychology Today; in 2004, exactly
1 credentialed individual did so. Even the advice column,
which
sometimes dealt with serious mental health issues, was
now
written by a career journalist rather than by a mental
health
professional. Scientific advances were still described in
the
news section in the front of the magazine but were
otherwise
absent. Important social issueswar, mental illness,
poverty,
and so onwere gone.
The cover of the September/October 2005 issue exemplifies
the change. The image is of an attractive model, her face
surrounded by segments of a folding tape measure. The
eyebrow
the strip above the magazines namereads,
The
Porn Impasse: His Problem or Her Hang-Up? The
main cover
line (upper left) is Status Anxiety: Why
Measuring Up Matters,
and the other cover lines are, respectively,
Rise of the
Trophy Kid, Crude Rude CEOs: Why
the Boss Acts Like a
Barbarian, 10 Soothing Truths
About Pain, Are the New
Suburbs Right for You? Why Funny
Women Are Intimidating,
and Infidelity: When to Confess.
The only item that
seems out of place on the page is the magazines
name. All of the
cover lines and most of the content of the magazine could
fit
easily into Redbook! Except in news blurbs, Psychology
Today
magazine no longer said much about psychology
yesterday,
today, or tomorrowand it no
longer provided a means for
psychologists to talk to the public. 7
ON FEEDING THE MEDIA BEAST
The sinewy path along which my
calling has taken me over the
past 30 years has been problematic in some
respectsit cost me
my marriage, for surebut it has also taught me a
great deal,
especially about how to use various media outlets to talk
to
people about mental health and the behavioral sciences.
Here
are the five most important lessons I have learned:
First and foremost, personal relationships are critical.
Who
you know is important, but even more important is being
strategic
about getting to know key people. If you are persistent
and
patient, you can eventually develop a relationship with
almost
any journalist, editor, or producer. Without such
relationships,
you and your message are likely to remain invisible.
Second, media professionals need your ideas, no matter
how
standoffish they may seem at times. In fact, very few
media
stories are actually initiated by journalists or
producers. Media
professionals are constantly, and sometimes desperately,
searching for good stories. The media machine is a giant
ravenous
beast, ingesting tasty tidbits about the world through
thousands of small orifices, then quickly excreting those
tidbits,
barely digested, through a much smaller number of
channels
for public reconsumption. Because the beast is ravenous,
and as
long as you are willing to do what it takes to hold its
attention (see
the first lesson), you can become one its feeders,
providing it
with a diet that meets your own high standards of
nutrition.
Third, contingencies of reinforcement are critically
important.
To produce reinforcers for yourself, you first need to
find
reinforcers for the media professionals. Never approach a
media
professional with your great
idea, wonderful
article, or
important story. Rather, find out
what he or she needs, and try
to help. Say straight out, as I still do frequently,
How can I help
you do your job? And look for areas where
your needs and the
journalists needs are both servedthat is,
where the contingencies
of reinforcement overlap.
Fourth, if you have attempted to
help a media professional
by sending him or her a pitch, a
query, or a media release
that you feel might suit his or her needs, and if you
have gotten no
response or even a negative response, you should not give
up or
take offense. Send in a gentle
reminder (that is exactly how I
label my e-mail messages) every week or two. Ask for
advice on
how to improve your proposalin other words, on how
to modify
it so that it better serves that individuals needs.
Take action to
strengthen the relationship. Stay informed about that
persons
ever-changing needs for new
content. Send in new ideas from
time to time, and, even if you do not have any, keep the
relationship
going. Sooner or later, something you have to offer is
almost certain to be appealing.
Fifth, and finally, the media machine is flawed by its
very
nature. If you forget this, you will be deeply
disappointed with
whatever eventually hits the airwaves or is published in
cyberspace
or in print. If you understand how and why the beast is
flawed, you will be more effective in making it work for
you, and
you will also be more realistic about the possible
outcomes.
Journalists move rapidly from one story to another, and
because
they are always working under firm deadlines, they have
little, if
any, time for nuance. Generally speaking, they also lack
both the
training and the inclination to get things entirely
right. They are
not laboratory scientists; they are trained to produce,
not to
putter. Stories need to get the critical facts right;
they need to be
readable by the average reader;
they need to fit into the space
or time or budget available. But despite what you might
think,
journalists do not need to get your quotes quite right,
and they
are strongly opposed, by nature, to pushing your agenda
in their
coverage. It is their coverage, after all. Do not let
this scare you;
as long as you play by the rules, the beast can be tamed
(see the
first four lessons).
FINAL
THOUGHTS
How many Americans know that the Lamaze method of natural
childbirth, now ubiquitous in American hospitals, was
inspired
by Pavlovs research on classical conditioning (N.C.
Beck, Geden,
& Brouder, 1979; Lamaze, 1970; Velvovsky, Platnov,
&
Ploticher, 1960)? Not many, I suspect. Psychologists are
notoriously
bad at playing the public-relations game. In contrast,
the medical fields barrage the public daily with
reminders of
what they have accomplished in the past, with reports of
their
recent successes (however modest), and with extravagant
promises of advances to come. Our own efforts to reach
the
public, laudable and substantial as they may be (e.g.,
see Pallak
& Kilburg, 1986; VandenBos, 1992), are modest by
comparison.
We are hampered by many factors, but perhaps the most
annoying
has been the existence of pop
psych, a massive
amalgam of pseudo-expertise that has shadowed the
legitimate
field for more than a century (Benjamin, 1986). The
public has
no way of distinguishing empirically based findings from
the
ramblings of self-proclaimed experts, and there is no
easy solution
to this problem. One sad result is the ever-wavering and
often negative image that people have of both clinicians
and
behavioral scientists. In its early years, Psychology
Today may
have been the best corrective the field ever had for all
the pop
psychology; in its current form, the magazine is probably
harming psychologys name more than helping it.
To me, this means we must redouble our efforts. Prominent
psychologists have reached out to the public since the
field was
founded (e.g., G.S. Hall, 1894; Jastrow, 1908), and our
professional
organizations have devoted considerable resources toward
this end. But we need more people to take the plunge, and
we need to think bigger. To build and maintain a strong
image, as
well as to share our expertise with people who might
benefit from
it, we need to reach tens of millions of people every
day. To
counter the ill effects of charlatans, we need to expose
them, to
offer sound alternatives to their prescriptions, and to
do so aggressively
and repeatedly. We need to build infrastructures that
utilize fast-emerging wired and wireless technologies in
ways
that make it easy for thousands of credentialed
scientists and
clinicians to communicate with the public regularly, and
we
need to give our graduate students the skills and
incentives they
need to fulfill this important mission. We have a great
deal to be
proud of and to offer; we do both ourselves and the
American
public a disservice when we hide even the smallest
glimmer of
our light (cf. Bevan, 1982; Pallak & Kilburg, 1986;
Zimbardo,
2004).
Millers (1969a, 1969b) stirring call for action
nearly four
decades agopublished in Psychology Today, by the
way, before
it appeared in the American Psychologistis as
important a
guidepost for our field now as it was in the 1960s. We
are still
guilty of the public modesty
(Miller, 1969a, p. 53) that Miller
protested; the world is still a dangerous, inhospitable
place for
most of its inhabitants; psychologys public image
is still mixed;
and charlatans still dominate every branch of the ever-
expanding public media empires. Miller (1969a) urged us
to
[instill] our scientific results . . . in the
public consciousness in
a practical and useful form so that what we know can be
applied
by ordinary people (p. 68). To do this
requires large-scale and
continuous communication with the American public; it is
here
that Psychology Today was helpful for a time, and it is
here that
we must all do better.
|
|
Notes and References 3Early contributors included
Elliot Aronson (1970), Richard Atkinson
(1968), Nathan Azrin (1967), Aaron Beck (A.T. Beck &
Jeffrey, 1978), Daryl
Bem (1967), Ellen Berscheid (Berscheid, Walster, &
Bohrnstedt, 1972), Bruno
Bettelheim (1969), Sidney Bijou (1968), Gordon Bower
(1973), Jerome Bruner
(1975), Raymond Cattell (1968), Noam Chomsky (1968),
Kenneth Clark (1970),
Paul Ekman (1975), Albert Ellis (1973), Erik Erikson
(1969), Hans Eysenck
(1967), Viktor Frankl (M.H. Hall, 1968), Erich Fromm
(1971), Harry Harlow
(Harlow & Harlow, 1967), Donald Hebb (1969), Arthur
Jensen (1973), Jerome
Kagan (1968), Alan Kazdin (1976), Sigmund Koch (1969),
Lawrence Kohlberg
(1968), Lewis Lipsitt (1971), Ivar Lovaas (Chance, 1974),
Masters and Johnson
(M.H. Hall, 1969b), Rollo May (1968), David McClelland
(1971), Margaret
Mead (Harris, 1970), Stanley Milgram (1967), George
Miller (1969a), Marvin
Minsky (1969), Jean Piaget (E. Hall, 1970), J.B. Rhine
(M.H. Hall, 1969a), Carl
Rogers (M.H. Hall, 1967a), Robert Rosenthal (1968),
Stanley Schachter (1971),
Martin Seligman (1973), Hans Selye (Cherry, 1978), Thomas
Szasz (1969),
Joseph Wolpe (1969), Robert Zajonc (1970), and Philip
Zimbardo (1967).
4 Advisory board members included University of
California president Richard
C. Atkinson, Nathan Azrin of Nova University, Gordon
Bower of Stanford
University, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi of Claremont Graduate
University, Albert
Ellis of the Albert Ellis Institute, Gregory Kimble of
Duke University, Harvards
Ellen Langer, Elizabeth Loftus of the University of
Washington, Jerome Singer
of Yale University, Robert Sternberg of Yale University,
and Philip Zimbardo of
Stanford University.
5Contributors included Norman
Anderson (Anderson & Anderson, 2003), now
APAs chief executive officer; David Buss (2000);
Bernardo Carducci (2000);
Albert Ellis (Epstein, 2001b); Roger Fouts (2000); John
Gottman (Gottman &
Carrere, 2000); Michael Lamb (2002); Elizabeth Loftus
(Loftus & Calvin, 2001);
Paul Rozin (2000); Daniel Schacter (2001); Robert
Sternberg (2000); Richard
6 Guests on the show included Jimmy Carter, the surgeon
general (four times),
Ruth Westheimer, Sally Field, Patty Duke, Fred Rogers,
Alan Dershowitz,
Christie Brinkley, Steve Allen (twice), Jamie Lee Curtis,
and dozens of other
notables, as well as more than 150 behavioral scientists
and practitioners,
among them Brian Baird, Herbert Benson, Robert Bjork,
Kenneth Cooper,
Albert Ellis, Michael Faenza, Raymond Fowler, Daniel
Goleman, Thomas
Gordon, Judith Rich Harris, Kay Redfield Jamison, Norine
Johnson, Peter
Kramer, Ellen Langer, Jack Mayer, David Myers, Russ
Newman, Sidney Parnes,
Susan Perry, Alvin Poussaint, Steven Reiss, Nancy Segal,
Dean Simonton,
Jerome Singer, and Robert Sternberg. Since 2005, I have
been hosting a similar
program, Psyched! on Sirius
Satellite Radio.
.7
7On a brighter note, Scientific American Mind, the
advertisement-free
magazine created recently by the editors of Scientific
American, seems to be on
solid ground so far, and the French publisher Hachette
Filipacchi MeŽdias, the
largest publisher in the world, recently launched a
British version of their
popular French magazine, Psychologies. An American
version may be coming
within the next few years. It will likely prove to be
even softer than todays
Psychology Today, but the competition might push
Psychology Today, once
again, back toward its origins.
Volume 1Number 4
Robert
Epstein
AcknowledgmentsIn preparing this article, I have
profited
from comments I received from a number of friends and
colleagues:
Edward L. Anderson, Jr.; Paul Chance; Nancy Dess; Ed
Diener; Karen Edwards; Edmund Fantino; T. George Harris;
Gregory Kimble; Elizabeth Loftus; Kurt Salzinger; Alberta
Swett; and Charles G. Thomas. Ignacia Galvan tracked down
many of the references.
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Giving
Psychology
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