The Press: Psyched Out

Every month, Psychology Today (circ. 1.1 million) tells Americans all they might want to know about sex, psychosurgery, biofeedback, insomnia, ultradian rhythms—indeed the whole galaxy of behavioral phenomena, from alienation to Zen. The magazine’s success is due largely to its editor in chief and resident visionary since 1969, T (for nothing) George Harris. He turned a jargon-pocked and profitless publication into a Popular Mechanics of human behavior—eminently readable, visually stimulating and worth more than $2 million a year in net profit for its present owner, Ziff-Davis Publishing Co., which bought the magazine in 1973.

Last week Ziff-Davis confirmed that Harris has been fired. Neither side would talk openly about the psychic trauma, but Harris’ problem seemed to be one of style rather than substance. A former TIME writer and bureau chief and Look senior editor, Kentucky-born,

Yale-educated Harris, 51, was hired by Publisher Nicholas Charney in 1968 to edit the short-lived Careers Today, and soon took over the ailing Psychology Today. Harris stayed on as editor when the magazine was sold to Boise Cascade in 1969, when it was later sold to Ziff-Davis, and even when it was moved last year from sunny Del Mar, Calif., where its beachside editorial conferences were renowned, to Manhattan.

Ping-Pong Table. The magazine traveled well (circulation is up 10% since the move, advertising pages up 35% so far this year), but Harris’ freewheeling flamboyance did not. Ziff-Davis, the nation’s fifth largest magazine publisher (Modern Bride, Popular Photography), is owned by Chairman William Ziff, 46. and run by a button-down battalion of 26 vice presidents. They winced when Harris risked offending liquor advertisers by publishing a tough cover story on drinking; they were displeased when he installed a Ping Pong table at the editorial offices (Harris paid for it himself), and they were confounded by the unregimented atmosphere he relished. “We have created the ultimate sweatshop, one where we have eliminated the difference between work and play,” Harris liked to say. (Stormed Ziff when he first heard this: “Exploitative nonsense. Work is work.”)

Determined to operate on its own disciplined terms, Ziff-Davis offered Harris a raise, a car and a kick upstairs to the job of associate publisher—and fired him when he refused to ascend. He is being replaced as editor by Wesley First, a Ziff-Davis vice president. Says Harris, who has no immediate plans: “The vice presidents couldn’t tolerate an editor who was unmanageable. We have a different set of values.”