Pistike

“Those with Trustworthy Convictions.”

A public career that would span 7 decades.

A radio and television icon of her time, an author of self help books, and a columnist, who wrote a daily newspaper advice column from 1960 to 2013 .

By 1958, the host of her own self-titled show on local television (which became so popular NBC syndicated the program nationally).

An excellent mind for memorising finite details.

Direct, down to earth, gaining great satisfaction from helping others, but also able to convey practical help to people, she described herself as a mother, wife, and psychologist last.

Before there was Dr Phil, there was Dr Joyce.

Joyce_Brothers_with book

The word ‘Guardian’ is the English equivalent of the Greek word ‘pistike,’ which means “those with trustworthy convictions.” In Plato’s Republic the social function of Guardians was to keep watch over the activities as well as the attitudes of the people in their circle. Centered in the world of visible and tangible things, Plato’s Guardians were known for relying on common sense and for holding morally correct beliefs, and they were alert to both the needs and the perils of others.

Guardians, no matter what they’re called, all have something in common, namely they all suggest that this type is concrete in word use and cooperative in tool use. Thus, in beginning our consideration of the habits of action and attitude of the Guardians, let us note that the foundation of the Guardian temperament, a foundation that sets them unmistakably apart from the other temperaments, is their unique combination of concrete word usage and cooperative tool usage.  [Please Understand Me II]

In Memoriam

Joyce Diane Bauer, Provider Guardian, was born Oct. 29, 1927, in New York City to Morris and Estelle Bauer, lawyers who practiced together and raised their two children on Long Island. Her younger sister, Elaine, became a lawyer and judge.

While earning her bachelor’s degree in home economics from Cornell  University, Brothers developed an interest in psychology. At Columbia, she studied psychology, earning a master’s degree in 1950 and a doctorate three years later. She wrote her dissertation on anxiety avoidance and escape behavior.

From Dr. Aveva Shukert:

“She was a pioneer. She was the first television psychologist, highly visible just as psychology was entering the mainstream. And because she was a woman, she was a double pioneer. You weren’t used to seeing female doctors at all then, let alone psychologists, who you never saw. Joyce was reasonable and funny, she also made talk therapy seem not so scary, and not just for the very disturbed. It became acceptable and mainstream, and she did that for female doctors which I don’t think people necessarily thought psychologists ever were. Dr Joyce broke a lot of stereotypes, and as a young female psychologist, that was all really important.”

Guardians are able to store an enormous fund of facts, which they will call up and, again, freely associate in conversation. They can remember people’s names, birthdays, the names of their friends’ parents and children, how those children are doing at school, who their relatives’ friends are, who’s gotten what job, who’s recently been born or has died (when, and of what), the date, time, and location of family, social, or civic events, and so on, one bit of information easily calling forth another. This is concrete information, concerning specific persons, products, times, and places, and lending itself to comparative value (this better than that) and amount (too much, not enough). It is the storage, retrieval, and effortless association of such data that makes Guardians the most comfortable at conversation of the four kinds of temperament. Besides being associative and comparative, Guardian speech is predominantly orthodox. Guardians are ever wary of putting on airs or getting fancy in what they say.  [Please Understand Me II]

joyceboxing

Brothers paved the way for others in her field to carve out careers on television and ultimately helped popularize psychology which is almost commonplace in contemporary media. “Dr Brothers was the first to open up the public airwaves to private feelings. There was no one like that,” Ron Simon, curator of the Paley Center for Media in New York, said in 2006 in the Bergen County, N.J, Record. “Now, so many programs deal with these intimate matters.”

During her appearance on The $64,000 Question “they were going to knock me out with impossible questions, but they didn’t,” Brothers later recalled.

Her answers included the full name of the Marquees of Queensberry and the length of the 1923 Jack Dempsey-Luis Firpo fight.

“I’d memorized everything there was to know about the subject,” she once said.

At the time, she was a new mother and the wife of a medical resident, whose stipend was a mere $50 a month. The family financial pinch provided motivation for poring over the record books of the fistic world.

“We were hungry,” Dr. Brothers told Coronet magazine. She later triumphed on a second game show, “The $64,000 Challenge.”

joyceattypewriter

Logistics is the procurement, distribution, service, and replacement of material goods. Logistics is vital to the success of any institution — a business, a household, a school, an army — and Guardians can be enormously creative in seeing to it that the right personnel have the right supplies in the right place at the right time to get the job done. Even though Guardians can develop skills in the other three spheres of intelligent action — tactics, strategy, diplomacy — it is much easier and enjoyable for them to practice and thus to develop their logistical intelligence.  [Please Understand Me II]

joycehowtogetbook

Her fans also perused the pages of “What Every Woman Should Know About Men,” which appeared in 1982, and her other books. One was “How to Get Whatever You Want Out of Life.”

It could be done, she said, without harm to other people.

It was important to her, she said, to make available to the public much of the “useful research locked up in libraries . . . research that people could put to use in their own lives.”

In 1971, she was credited with keeping a caller to her radio show from committing suicide.

Logistical Conservators The friendly Guardians are prone to choose the part of the Conservator, that person whose job it is to support institutions by insuring the supply and security of those persons and properties they are responsible for. In their support role, Conservators tend to be more informative than directive, giving information — reports, accounts, records and so on — first, and giving orders only as a last resort. As in the case of the Administrator, there are many words that define the Conservator’s function: amass, bank, budget, collect, deposit, garner, gather, hold, husband, keep, reserve, save, stock, store, and warehouse. As Conservators, Guardians look after their responsibilities by working either as the expressive Provider or the reserved Protector. Providers work to furnish others with the necessities of life, to serve others, to see to their welfare, to make sure they feel well-provisioned and a part of the group. This outgoing, public role can be acted out in the form of banker, benefactor, caterer, equipper, distributor, financier, furnisher, host or hostess.  [Please Understand Me II]

Joyce Brothers In A CBS 'Bicentennial Minute'
 “The best proof of love is trust.”

Dr Joyce clearly had a passion for psychology and a knack for dishing out advice to the lovelorn, but was no wallflower.  Not one to stay hidden in the shadows and let others forget her, Brothers appeared as herself in many television sitcoms throughout her career (Happy Days, Tax, Family Ties, The Nanny, Moonlighting, Suddenly Susan, just to name a few) and was one of the most recurring guests on The Johnny Carson Show.  By the time Johnny retired, she was the ninth most frequent guest.

“Being taken for granted can be a compliment. It means that you’ve become a  comfortable, trusted element in another person’s life.”

“Marriage is not just spiritual communion, it is also remembering to take out  the trash.”

By 1956, she became co-host of “Sports Showcast” and frequently appeared on talk shows.

Two years later, NBC offered her a trial on an afternoon television program in which she advised on love, marriage, sex and child-rearing. Its success led to a nationally telecast program, and subsequent late-night shows that addressed such taboo subjects as menopause, frigidity, impotence and sexual enjoyment.

She also dispensed advice on several phone-in radio programs, sometimes going live. She was criticized by some for giving out advice without knowing her callers’ histories. But Brothers responded that she was not practicing therapy on the air and that she advised callers to seek professional help when needed.

Despite criticism of the format, the call-in show took off, and by 1985, the Association of Media Psychologists was created to monitor for abuses.

For almost four decades, Brothers was a columnist for Good Housekeeping. She also wrote a daily syndicated advice column that appeared in more than 350 newspapers, and in 1961, she was host of her own television program.

Later, Brothers branched out into film, playing herself in more than a dozen movies, including “Analyze That” (2002), “Beethoven’s 4th” (2001), “Lover’s Knot” (1996) and “Dear God” (1996).

She was also an advocate for women. In the 1970s, Brothers called for changing textbooks to remove sexist bias, noting that nonsexist cultures tend to be less warlike.

Dr Brothers wrote numerous advice books, including “Ten Days To A Successful Memory” (1964), “Positive Plus: The Practical Plan for Liking Yourself Better” (1995) and “Widowed” (1992), a guide to dealing with grief written after the death of her husband in 1990.

Brothers is survived by sister Elaine Goldsmith, daughter Lisa Brothers Arbisser, four grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.

Guardians are interested in occupations that have to do with procedures for managing materiel, that is, for gathering, storing, recording, measuring, and distributing equipment and supplies. In jobs of this nature Guardians are incomparable, for no other area of work is so well suited to standard operations and by-the-book procedures. Of course, Guardians come up with new ideas, too, but their creativity comes to the fore most easily in the areas of arranging and scheduling.

Provider Guardians are very likely more than ten percent of the population. This is fortunate for all of us, because cooperation and social facilitation is a key to their nature. Natural proprietors, Providers are skilled in maintaining teamwork among their helpers, and are also tireless in their attention to the details of arranging goods and services.

Personable, talkative, they are likely to be aware of and to enjoy discussing events and problems in people’s lives.  [Please Understand Me II]

Up until most recently, Dr. Brothers had been seen on television advertising home alert monitoring devices.

Joyce-Brothersolder

openquoteTrust your hunches. They’re usually based on facts filed away just below the conscious level.closedquote  — Joyce Brothers 

5 thoughts on “Pistike”

  1. An incredible memory, such a helpful person, thanks for this, I had heard name and never knew her story. What a story. Excellent example of a Guardian.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *