Night Thoughts

Q. My husband and I have been married for eight years, but lately he has taken to looking at other women and reading girlie magazines. What should I do?

A. If you owned the Mona Lisa would you stop going to art galleries and museums and looking at other paintings? What's wrong with looking?

The performer who supplied the answers on NBC's late-night leap into popular psychiatry this week was Joyce Brothers, 31, the blonde psychologist (Ph.D. Columbia, 1953) and book-taught boxing expert who three years ago took the $64,000 Question and the $64,000 Challenge for $134,000. Possibly assuming that Jack Paar sets up an audience of insomniac worriers, NBC has tacked Consult Dr. Brothers onto the end of the broadcast day (11:15 a.m.. weekdays). Dr. Joyce, who warmed up with a daytime show for a year, is the network's new way of bidding the country good night. Says she: "Our purpose is not to entertain."

Psychologist Brothers (who has never had a practice of her own) works hard accumulating the knowledge she rattles off so smoothly. Before she answers any letters, she consults available periodicals and her own 1,500-book library. "I read everything I can get my hands on on the subject," says she. "Then I condense it and put it into layman's language. There's so much that's been done in the psychiatric area that just isn't available to the average person. I act as translator and make it available."

As translator in the weeks ahead, Dr. Brothers will discuss why men get tattooed ("an ancient symbol of manliness, used by masculine men as an amulet, or by feminine men to attract attention"), why people are late ("rebellion against authority"), why some wives are extravagant ("She really wants to be refused; she's a masochist"). Not among the questions so far: why women become psychologists.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.