Charles Winick

Charles Winick
Born	(1922-08-04)August 4, 1922 Manhattan, New York City
Died	July 4, 2015(2015-07-04) (aged 92)
Nationality	United States
Occupation(s)	Academician, author, psychologist, consultant
Notable work	The New People: Desexualization in American Life, The Lively Commerce

Charles Winick (August 4, 1922 – July 4, 2015) was an American author, psychologist and academician, noted for his work in the fields of gender, drug addiction and prostitution.

He was a professor of sociology at the the Graduate Center of the City University of New York and the City College of New York, taught at Columbia University, and was the author of more than twenty books, including a book which lamented the decline in the difference between the genders, and a study of prostitution. Winick also challenged the accepted view of narcotics addiction, contending that opiates are harmless but cause harm because they are taken under adverse conditions.

Early life and education

Winick was born in the Bronx, New York City, to Russian Jewish immigrants. His father was a housepainter. As a child he was so poor that his family was featured in the "New York Times Neediest Cases," and the reporter who wrote the story was so distressed by their poverty that he gave the family his own overcoat. Winick graduated from the City College of New York, and served in the U.S. Army during World War II. He was initially assigned to military intelligence, but then was assigned to interrogate prominent German prisoners of war, including Wernher von Braun.

Career

After the war he earned a doctorate from New York University and remained in the reserves, retired as a lieutenant colonel. In addition to his academic work, he was research director of the Anti-Defamation League and also worked for the New York State Narcotics Commission and J. Walter Thompson, the advertising agency. In 1959 he wrote Taste and the Censor in Television for the Fund for the Republic, and in 1962, while on the Columbia faculty, he was hired by NBC as a consultant on children's programming.

Winick's book The New People: Desexualization in American Life, published in 1969, argued that American society was following in the path of Ancient Greece and Rome by gradually becoming a neutered society. He said in the book that “equality does not mean equivalence, and a difference is not deficiency.” Winick maintained that America was becoming a "beige-colored" society, and that distinctions between the genders were becoming blurred.

His views on drug addiction were controversial. He believed that heroin addicts can overcome their addictions, and that those who cannot should be treated as victims of a chronic disease.

His 1971 book The Lively Commerce, co-authored by Paul M. Kinsie, a study of prostitution based on interviews with 2,000 prostitutes over ten years, found that most prostitutes were physically unattractive, often are short, overweight and have "flagrant physical defects," and that three-quarters of a sampling of call girls had attempted suicide. The authors found that 15% of all suicides brought to public hospitals in the U.S. were prostitutes. The book also tracked the growth of homosexual and transvestite prostitution. It found that brothels and "madams"(female brothel owners) had largely become a thing of the past, and that though prostitution was a $1 billion-a-year industry prostitutes were paid little better than clerks, earning $5000 to $6000 in net income for a six-day workweek.

Winick also was among the first jury consultants, using sociologists' tools to advise lawyers on selecting juries. Among the cases that he advised were those of Jean Harris and Claus von Bulow, both accused murderers.

He also was the author of Dictionary of Anthropology (1956).

Personal life

Winick was married to Mariann Pezzella, with whom he authored a number of books and articles. She died in 2006. They had two children, Ralph and Laura Winick. He died in Manhattan, New York at the age of 92 on July 4, 2015.