Prof. Sorokin's $100,000 Report on Love

A picture captioned "Elsa Martinelli: at last, perfection," dominates the cover of the May issue of Male Publishing Corporation Brief magazine, while the article featured at the top of the page claims "I'm sick of dying every day." But the banner headline is reserved for "Harvard's $100,000 Love Report."

The article itself covers four well-illustrated pages paraphrased from the report on Creative Altrusim by Pitirim A. Sorokin, professor of Sociology, emeritus. Brief's story is, he says, "an over-simplification and a vulgarization, but it contains nothing that need be repudiated."

While the text follows reasonably closely to Sorokin's basic theses, less care has been taken with the pictures. These range from a traditional pose of young love in a country lane, to a more unorthodox one of a G.I. with one arm around his buddy and the other arm around his bottle.

Despite the imaginative title, Brief has produced little in the text to rival Kinsey. In a paragraph headed "What About Sex?" the author says "Like hunger and thirst, sex is a human drive."

"Sorokin leaves it at that," he adds disappointedly.

Other sub-heads report "what love can do" (cure colds and stop wars) and "how we can become loving" (through suffering, friendship, or example).

Brief's anonymous analysis was written without Sorokin's knowledge, as was the Chinese translation which he received last week from Hong Kong. His work has now been translated into 36 different languages, "more than any other sociologist," he said, "including Mr. Toynbee."

Sorokin considers the appearance of such articles in "the very popular magazines" to be a good sign of the growing interest in creative altruism. "Books about my books are increasingly being published," he said.

His latest work, Fads and Foibles in Modern Sociology, Psychology, and Psychiatry, is being published next week. It is "a very sharp criticism, straight from the shoulder," he said.