a conversation with Nicholas Charney,Ph.D., founder of PSYCHOLOGY
TODAY
Owen Lipstein for PT: How did you come up with the idea for
PSYCHOLOGY TODAY?
NC: When I was a kid, my favorite magazine was Scientific American,
and the most popular articles were often about psychology, which were the
only kinds of articles most people could read in the magazine. And I said
to myself in my third year of graduate school (at the University of
Chicago), what the country needed was sort of a Scientific American of
the social human psychological sciences. I thought it was important that
people have access to information about psychology that was different
from the kind of information they would get in Cosmopolitan or some of
the more popular sources.
PT: But Scientific American is a magazine about science for
scientists, whereas PSYCHOLOGY TODAY became the magazine about psychology
for the educated layman. Do you disagree with that?
NC: I always believed that a psychologist who was reading about or
learning about an area of psychology which was not his/her own main
subject was no more than an educated layman himself. So just as I knew
that the magazine would be successful among the 50,000 or so
psychologists in the country, I also knew that it had the opportunity to
appeal to people who were in college or had a college education. And
those are fairly large numbers. I always thought that the magazine had
the potential to reach millions of people, but I also knew it had to
start with a core and have the support of the psychological community in
order to be successful.
PT: Well, did it have the support of the professional community
from the start?
NC: Absolutely. In fact, it has had the support of the
psychological community all the way through its existence, which is why
the American Psychological Association bought it. It was far more
important in defining what psychology was in our society then was the
APA. Psychology was almost reinvented for the American public by
PSYCHOLOGY TODAY. There was no other publication devoted to it. Everyone
endorsed the idea of trying to educate the public about
psychology.
PT: This was 25 years ago. Where was psychology then as compared to
now?
NC: There are probably twice as many psychologists now as there
were then. I think there are the same number of students in psychology
now. We had a very conscious plan to bring psychology into the classroom.
We believed very strongly that if it could have its grass roots in the
colleges and among the professors, then we would be very successful. One
of the reasons PT began to lose some of its momentum in the 1970s is
because the educational-film division was spun off, the book club got
sold, the textbooks became part of Random House, and all these other
things that had enabled PT to penetrate into the school and college
market weren't there. Another reason why a lot of people today feel so
strongly about PT is because psychology was a big part of their education
and how they learned about the world.
PT: My belief is that, in 1967, psychology had for college students
an excitement and discovery about it that it does not have now. When it
was your major in '67, it said you were avant garde, you were
interesting. I don't think it has the same excitement now. Do you think
this is true?
NC: I have an advantage, I was there in '67. They said exactly the
same thing back then. That's why the theme of promotion was "What is
psychology?", and then "What is psychology today?" In 1967, I was told by
every professional in the business that PT would get maybe a quarter of a
million people to read it, that it wasn't a popular enough subject.
People thought we'd run out of material. I think psychology has always
had sort of a bad reputation as being wishy-washy and soft, the people
who study it are a little kooky themselves. Everybody is interested in
it, but not everybody respects it.
PT: What about 15 years later, when you went back as editorial
director?
NC: PT ran into the problem of copying itself. That was sort of the
stagnant state it was in when I took over. That's always bad--a magazine
should always be stretching forward, never looking back. You want it to
be alive, on the cutting edge. The first seven or eight years really set
the tone for what the magazine was to become. When I went back 10 years
ago, I was a very different editor.
PT: How so?
NC: It became increasingly clear to me that psychology was much too
important to leave to psychologists. I believed what was important was
the subject or content, and not necessarily whether the professionalism
came from a psychologist or physicist or psychiatrist. You don't have to
lose your integrity at all to be interesting. It is much more important
that the star is the subject matter, not the contributor.
PT: You're saying that you consciously took it out of the academy.
Why?
NC: Because I knew it would represent the subject better. It would
make for much more interesting matter, which readers I could relate to
better. When the APA tried to make the magazine a house organ, we had a
lot of fights. They didn't want psychiatrists to contribute to the
magazine; they were always thinking of the association and its members
first, and not paying enough attention to the real readers. They had no
idea how to edit that magazine for the public.
PT: Do you think there will ever be a time when we understand
ourselves so well that we won't need such as thing as PSYCHOLOGY
TODAY?
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