Seeking Balance

Koyaanisqatsi. It's not a word you hear every day. In the language
of theHopi Indians, it means "life out of balance." Director Godfrey
Reggio used the term as the title of his classic film--a disturbing swirl
of traffic jams, automation gone berserk, and exploding pieces of the
Challenger space shuttle. Life out of balance is effortful and unpleasant
at best. At times, it can be agonizing.

By choice or necessity, we all seek balance in our lives: the
balance of work and play, of freedom and responsibility, of chocolate
cake and Diet Coke (I insist these balance out). Even our bodies seek
balance, compensating for changing conditions to keep temperature, blood
sugar, and dozens of other characteristics stable. Balance means
health.

Balance is also a goal of PSYCHOLOGY TODAY. We strive, from cover
to cover, to bring you authoritative information about mental health and
the behavioral sciences. By authoritative, we don't mean merely "from
authorities." Gurus, after all, are considered by some to be authorities,
and almost anyone these days can gain authority status with a slick Web
page. We're talking about the authority that comes from scientific
research. Science gives us powerful methods for testing the validity of
conjectures and hypotheses. It's a conservative endeavor, subjecting
every idea to the constant scrutiny of a large, fairly skeptical
community. It yields concepts and techniques we can count on--and, at its
best, it never stops re-examining.

But since science can be boring, even intimidating, PSYCHOLOGY
TODAY, in the spirit of magazines like Popular Science and Scientific
American, tries to make the behavioral sciences appealing. This requires
considerable balancing; in fact, we often feel like we're walking on a
very thin tightrope, trying to assure, on the one hand, that our content
is scientifically accurate, while also making it fun and easy to
digest--all without falling into the pit of mediocrity. We go to great
lengths to stay aloft--recruiting accomplished scientists and scholars to
write articles, then rewriting, editing and illustrating to bring the
concepts to life. We design several different covers for each issue and
then conduct surveys to determine what will appeal to the consumer. We
end up, we hope, with an impeccably balanced product--one with the allure
and readability of a pop magazine and the scientific rigor of a scholarly
journal.

This issue exemplifies our best efforts. More than 400 consumers
helped us pick our "Got Love?" cover. The cover topic is "pop," but our
treatment is authoritative: Yale University's Robert Sternberg, Ph.D.,
one of the world's most distinguished psychologists, will give you some
remarkable insights into your love life in an article that's provocative,
practical, and, yes, science-based. In "My Best Friend Is A Chimp,"
another outstanding researcher, Roger Fouts, Ph.D., will show you our
primate cousins with a unique mix of compassion and rigor. In "Do We
Really Have A Sixth Sense?" parapsychologist Dean Radin, Ph.D., argues
that such a sense exists, and University of Oregon psychologist Ray
Hyman, Ph.D., offers a compelling critique.

To keep our balance, we need your feedback. Are we entertaining and
informing you? Are we helping you achieve your own balance? Let me
know.

ROBERT EPSTEIN is editor-in-chief of PSYCHOLOGY TODAY, University
Research Professor at United States International University in San
Diego, and Director Emeritus of the Cambridge Center for Behavioral
Studies in Massachusetts. He earned his Ph.D. in psychology at Harvard
University in 1981. You can reach him at psychtoday@juno.com.