Joyce Diane Bauer Brothers (October 20, 1927 – May 13, 2013) was an American psychologist, television personality, advice columnist, and writer.
In 1955, she won the top prize on the American game show The $64,000 Question. Her fame from the game show allowed her to go on to host various advice columns and television shows, which established her as a pioneer in the field of pop (popular) psychology.
Brothers is often credited as the first to normalize psychological concepts to the American mainstream. Her syndicated columns were featured in newspapers and magazines, including a monthly column for Good Housekeeping, to which she contributed for nearly 40 years. As Brothers quickly became the "face of psychology" for American audiences, she appeared in numerous television roles, usually as herself. From the 1970s onward, she also began to accept fictional roles that mocked her "woman psychologist" persona. She is noted for working continuously for five decades across various platforms. Numerous groups recognized Brothers for her strong leadership as a woman in the psychology field and for trying to end the stigma around mental health.
Contents
Early life and education
Joyce Brothers was born to Jewish attorneys Morris K. Bauer and Estelle Rapport, who shared a law practice. She grew up in Far Rockaway, Queens, New York. She had a sister named Elaine Goldsmith, to whom she was close. Joyce described that, while she was growing up, her father treated her like a son. He even decided to name her "Joseph" instead of Joyce before she was born. As a result, she grew up in an environment in which her gender made no difference in the family's expectations of high academic performance. Consequently, she was often described as being a studious person, thriving on "hard work and academic achievement".
Brothers graduated from Far Rockaway High School in January 1944. Afterward, she entered Cornell University, double-majoring in home economics and psychology and graduated with a Bachelor of Science with honors in 1947. Brothers was a member of Sigma Delta Tau at the time. She then attended Columbia University, where she obtained a Master of Arts in 1949 and a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology in 1953. Her doctoral dissertation was titled "Anxiety Avoidance and Escape Behaviour as Measured by Action Potential in Muscle". While working on her graduate studies, she was a research assistant at Columbia, an instructor at Hunter College, and a research fellow on a UNESCO leadership project from 1949 to 1959. The American Association of University Women awarded Brothers a fellowship in 1952, which enabled her to complete the doctoral degree.
Career
Television and radio
Brothers's first television appearance was at the age of 28. At that time, her husband was making $50 a month as a medical intern at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York, which was not enough to support them and their three-year-old daughter. To escape what Brothers called the "slum-like conditions" of her New York City walkup, she was driven to enter as a contestant on the game show The $64,000 Question. The top-charting show had the largest jackpot of all quiz shows at the time.
To become a contestant, Brothers had to write a letter describing herself and her hobbies, explaining why she would make a great contestant, and outlining what she would do with the winnings. Eventually, the letter landed her an interview with Mert Koplin, the show's producer. While in her letter she discussed her qualifications in the field of psychology and home economics, she was not allowed to use her expert knowledge for the show, as The $64,000 Question did not allow participants to be quizzed on topics of their expertise or profession. As such, Brothers had to come up with a new topic area for her to be quizzed on for the show.
With the gender roles of the time in mind, Koplin thought he could draw in the most viewership by juxtaposing Brothers's perceived frailty as a woman with the idea that she knew a great deal about a more masculine field. He is credited with saying Brothers should be given a topic on "something that [she] shouldn't know about... [something like] if it were football or if it were horse racing or boxing...."
Brothers's husband was a great fan of boxing, so she chose that as her topic. To prepare, she studied twenty-volume boxing encyclopedias and many years' worth of Ring Magazine issues and worked with boxing writer Nat Fleischer and former Olympic boxing champion and New York State Athletic Commissioner Edward P. F. Eagan. After studying, she progressed on the show for several weeks. Despite the show's producers' efforts to stump her at the $16,000 mark by asking questions involving referees rather than the boxers themselves, she exceeded expectations and won the top prize.
Brothers used her photographic memory and focus on learning everything she could and quickly became regarded as an expert in the subject area of boxing. Her success on The $64,000 Question earned Brothers a chance to be the color commentator for CBS during the boxing match between Carmen Basilio and Sugar Ray Robinson. She was said to have been the first female boxing commentator.
Newspaper and books
Brothers had a monthly column in Good Housekeeping for almost four decades and a syndicated newspaper column that she began writing in the 1970s, which at its height was printed in more than 300 newspapers. She also published several books, including the 1981 book What Every Woman Should Know About Men and the 1991 book Widowed, inspired by the loss of her husband. Her advice was used as a source for some questions on the 1998–2004 incarnation of Hollywood Squares.
Brothers conducted self-promotion and was skilled in navigating the male-dominated media industry. In addition to her television and radio presence, Brothers wrote best-selling books; these books included advice on how to achieve a successful marriage and career.
Impact
Social conversation
She was viewed as the public crisis counselor as she was asked to comment on issues like Diana, Princess of Wales's death and the explosion of the Challenger space shuttle.
Joyce Brothers addressed homosexuality in 1972 in her newspaper column. After the 1999 Columbine school shooting, she was a persistent presence on CNN for gun control legislation.
More memorable episodes of her advice shows include when she helped a man on air who called in contemplating suicide as a result of being blind in one eye and nearly blind in the other. Her efforts included keeping him on air for 30 minutes—long enough for National Save-A-Life to contact him. Another, similar episode aired in 1971 when a woman called and threatened to overdose on sleeping pills. As this was a riveting circumstance, the show was left running for three more hours uninterrupted, so that Brothers was able to extract a phone number from the woman to get an ambulance to her.
Sexism
Upon receiving acceptance into Columbia University for her Ph.D, the dean of her department told her that, while her qualifications were impeccable, she was taking the position of a man who would use the degree and that it would therefore be best if she dropped her position. However, Brothers did not waver and maintained her position.
However, she was a product of the time, evidenced by her belief that her husband should be the breadwinner. She gave up any notion of pursuing a career in psychology for herself because it could mean being in competition with her husband. Early in her career, when Brothers was asked by women for advice on what to do if their husbands showed interest in other women, Brothers was known to ask the caller to look at themselves and ask what they could do to be more like the women their husbands seemed to chase. Brothers later became more involved with issues of women's rights. In 1972, she was one of many who testified in front of the platform committee on women's issues, also serving as acting chair of a U.S. delegation for the 16th assembly of the Inter-American Commission of Women. In 1979, she provided proposals at the congressional hearing on "problems of mid-life women", speaking on employment, retirement income, and anti-ageism in television characters.
Criticism, positive contributions, and awards
Controversy surrounding Brothers's pop psychology
As her fame grew there was an increase in disapproval among psychologists and psychiatrists. They questioned both the validity of her psychological claims and her authority in providing psychological advice. A growing number of psychologists began to believe the advice she provided to her audience was unethical in that she did not hold any clinical degree and she was giving advice to strangers, not to patients with whom she had professional relationships. Stevens and Gardener, the authors of Women of Psychology, stated that "traditional psychologists smile subtly when her name is mentioned and they often complain that she actually does more damage than good." There were many attempts by American Psychological Association members to revoke Brothers’s membership; they objected to the form in which Brothers's advice was provided. Although her membership never was revoked, Brothers's public professional activities did cause some uproar in the community.
De-stigmatizing psychology
Despite the criticism, at the end of one of her TV appearance in December 1958, Roger Turtle and Joyce Brothers discussed the logistics behind the process of her TV appearances. There were 15 hours spent preparing for each show, with consultations with other professionals and the breakdown of the grand field of psychology to be understood in terms of everyday language. All this occurring behind the scenes, during the actual shows there were many references to scientific research and explicit statements that psychology is a service, not simply a source of entertainment. These shows provided a platform to "professionalize and de-stigmatize psychology". Mental health was stigmatized and not as covered in the media, but Brothers strived to contribute significantly to giving people a different perspective. Her show allowed the public to view psychologists as real people.
With an influx of letters from those that wanted advice from several topics like: marriage, parenting, work, money; also other taboo topics like menopause, infidelity and sex. Her light on these topics assisted in normalizing these within the mainstream media, with an explicit importance on therapy for everyday life and not only those with mental illness stated.
Honors and awards
Brothers was recognized with the following honors and awards: Women of Achievement Award, Federation of Jewish Women (1964); Professional Woman of the Year, Business and Professional Women's Club (1968); Award of the Parkinson Disease Foundation. She was given an honorary degree, the L.H.D., from Franklin Pierce College in 1969.
Personal life
In 1949, she married Milton Brothers, who later became an internist. In 1989, Brothers lost her husband to bladder cancer. Following the death of her husband, Brothers fell into a state of depression for a year and contemplated suicide; however, she used her work to achieve inner peace and recover. Brothers and her husband had a daughter, four grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.
Death
Brothers died on May 13, 2013, at her home in Fort Lee, New Jersey. Lisa Brothers Arbisser, her daughter, said that respiratory failure was the cause.
