THE STARS DOWN TO EARTH
rationality that recommends postponement of immediate wish-fulfillment for the sake of later permanent and complete gratifications. One is taught to give up immediate pleasures for the sake of a future which only too often fails to compensate for the pleasures one has renounced. Thus rationality does not always seem as rational as it claims to be. Hence the interest of hammering over and over again into people’s heads ideas to which they are already conditioned but in which they can never fully believe. Hence also their readiness to embrace irrational panaceas in a world in which they have lost faith in the effectiveness of their own reason and in the rationality of the total set-up. IMAGE OF THE ADDRESSEE Perusal of the column over a longer period of time permits one to figure out the columnist’s image of his reader, the basis of the techniques he employs. The over-all rule is that this picture must mainly be flattering, offer gratifications even before actual advice is tendered, but must be at the same time of such a nature that the addressee can still identify himself and his petty worries with the picture of himself he is constantly offered. No American data were available as to the sex distribution of astrology fans, but it seems reasonable to assume that their majority are women or at least that women are equally represented among them. The columnist is very likely well aware of this. Strangely enough, however, the implicit picture of the addressee, though rarely quite articulate, is predominantly male. The reader is presented as a professional person who has authority and has to make decisions; he is presented as a practical person, technically minded and able to fix things. Most characteristic of all, whenever the erotic sphere is touched upon, the addressee has to see an “attractive companion.” As a popular psychologist, the columnist seems to be better aware than many supposedly serious writers of the inferior status of women in modern society in spite of their supposed emancipation, their participation in professional life and the glamor heaped upon some of them. He seems to feel that women will usually feel flattered if they are treated as men as long as the specific sphere of their femininity and its conventional attributes are not involved which does not happen in the column; it is suggested to each housewife that she might be a V.I.P. Possibly the columnist draws even on some psychoanalytic knowledge of penis envy14 when talking to an audience of women as though he were addressing men. An additional factor may be contributing to the male characterization of the addressee. Since the column is continuously tendering advice, wants
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