Your Personality.
1938-1943? Quarterly
New York, NY.
Editor: Dr. Wilfred J. Funk, editorial director; Douglas E. Lurton, editor; Donald G. Cooley, managing editor.
Publisher: Yourself Publishing Co. / Kingsway Press, Inc.
1/1, 1938-1943 (?)
128 pp., 25 cents a copy.

This journal was a late, commercialized mass-market example of New Thought's transformation into secularized self-improvement, encouragement, self-help and "Practical Psychology." Wilfred J. Funk (1883-1965) was the long-time president of Funk & Wagnalls, publisher of American dictionaries and encyclopedias. In 1937 he had started the quarterly Your Life which achieved a circulation of 100,000 by addressing health, charm, love, popularity, witty conversation, etc. The success of that journal prompted Funk the next year to spin off its "charm" department into Your Psychology, featuring articles on "How to Win Popularity," "How to Reshape Your Personality," "Easy Way to Make Friends," "You Don't Have to Feel Inferior," etc. It supplemented these offerings with 10,000 word condensations of best-selling improvement books and long exercises designed to "Give Yourself Background" by boning up on the general information, famous quotations and allusions, and literary knowledge that would allow the common reader to pass for educated and mix with his betters. Wilfred's father, who had started Funk & Wagnalls, was Isaac K. Funk (1838-1912), a spiritualist and psychical researcher who may be remembered today for his having been swindled by the Bangs Sisters and for having been part of H. Spencer Lewis's New York Institute for Psychical Research, on which see the note under Future.

IAPSOP materials are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
IAPSOP respects people's privacy and personal data rights.