Del Mar, Calif., 18 miles north of San Diego, is a pleasant and quiet resort town with a population of 3,000. But these days some of the lively types taking advantage of the small-town atmosphere and the balmy climate have more on their minds than surfing and suntans. They are magazine editors—many in their mid-20s—holding story conferences for two new magazines, Psychology Today and Careers Today. Says Nicolas H. Charney, 27, who founded both of them: "It's a very synergistic environment."
To launch his venture, Charney formed a corporation in January 1967, after receiving a Ph. D. in biopsychology from the University of Chicago. "About all I knew," he says, "was that I want ed to put out a magazine, a sort of Scientific American of the social sciences. There is psychology behind all acts—eating, going to bed, and so on. People are curious about these things."
Ponderous Talk. He raised $250,000 from friends and friends of friends. Within four months he and a staff of five sent the first issue of his monthly Psychology Today to the newsstands.
From the start, Charney decided that the way to talk about psychology was to let specialists do the talking. Articles ranged from "The Psychopharmacological Revolution" to "Civilization and Its Malcontents," which argued that the neurotic is deficient in his socialization, not excessive, as Freud believed. M.I.T. Linguist Noam Chomsky has dealt with "Language and the Mind," and others have presented conclusions of research projects in areas ranging from "Fantasy Differences in Men and Women" to "Political Attitudes in Children." The current issue takes on the question of "Does the Law Work for You?" with contributors grappling with the problems of "The Psychiatrist and the Legal Process" and the perceptions of witnesses in court. "We discovered that the more punitive people in each of our groups had better recall than the less punitive," writes the author, who disputes the idea that the adversary system "can winnow out the truth."
The authority of the articles is too often obscured by ponderous writing. Aimed at an unspecialized audience, the magazine needs more translation by competent, middleman journalists. Mary Harrington Hall, a former science writer who was one of the first staffers hired by Charney, comes closest. But even when she tries to inject lightness and broader explanation into her tape-recorded interviews with the likes of Existentialist-Psychotherapist Rollo May and Harvard Behaviorist B. F. Skinner, the transcribed result more often than not sounds like interruptions.
Visually, the magazine can hardly be faulted. The art and photography is rich with color and imagination, providing a provocative—almost psychedelic—accompaniment to the text. In the pre-election issue, for example, television's importance in a campaign year was illustrated by a cover photo showing a woman thrusting her baby forward to be kissed by a politician. Ignoring the infant, the politician is pressing his lips to the lens of a nearby television camera.
Mr. Chips. Psychology Today was only Charney's first step. For the second, Careers Today, Management