Replace your therapist with these psych magazines

At best, these psych mags will help to fill the gap while your therapist is away for that annual August vacation. But to be on the safe side, have your partner or parents or roommates read them, too.

Psychology Today is perhaps the most balanced choice of easy-to-understand features in an authoritative tone. The magazine answers questions about why you’re not getting any post-baby sex, why parents who put kids first are killing their marriages and offers the best way to say “not tonight, darling,” in a way that won’t end in divorce. The cover story on “Love and Lust” surprisingly suggests that contrary to popular belief married people are having more sex than singles. And here’s the stomach-churner: in “Partners in Crime,” women who aide men in crimes are described in all their horror.

Psychologies, from across The Pond, is primarily a women’s lifestyle book with features on interiors, travel and throwaway articles on how to buy only the essential beauty products — to free your mind presumably. Angelina Jolie is pictured soft focus on the cover and gives an interview that feels like a clips job, talking about how visiting war zones changed her perspective on life.

The main features are, predictably, about love and keeping the relationship flame alive. There’s a cute interview with a 95-year-old woman who had two marriages, one of 45 years and the next for 20 years. (We’re relieved the package included a perspective by a single lady who’s proud of her status.)

Scientific American Mind, as the title suggests, is like reading an academic journal. It’s full of ‘well-I-never!’ type of stories such as the piece about a woman who fell off the back of a motorbike and became constantly, but painfully, sexually aroused. If you’re dating someone who doesn’t appear able to express their emotions, they could be suffering from “alexithymia.” The main package covers the topic of creativity and explores people who have Ah ha! moments. We like the zany design and cool illustrations which kick it up a notch for regular consumers. Still, though, this one fits best on a brainiac professor’s desk.

We may be the ultimate cynics here at Media City, but the smiley CEO of this magazine invites our style of humor. He’s dressed in a white suit and appears on the opening page in a swirly graphic that makes him look like he’s touched down from heaven. While we welcome a magazine about positivity, Live Happy is as light as a feather, which makes it a great read for the doctor’s waiting room. We’ll take a leaf from the title and look on the brighter side though: The feature on the wonder of special-needs kids and the enrichment they can bring to families is a unique way of examining a little-dissected topic. There’s also a huge package on how the later years in life can be the happiest. Get grandpa an X-box? “Happiness is a choice,” claims actress Cloris Leachman, age 88.

The New Yorker’s David Remnick digs up his old Rolodex of sources in Russia for a navel-gazer on the crisis in Ukraine. We get no startling revelations, but former US Ambassador Michael McFaul sums up the problem nicely, noting Vladimir Putin’s taste for conspiracy theories about the CIA, including his idea that the CIA was responsible for sparking the Arab Spring. “I struggle with that: Is he really super-clever and this is his psych op, or does he believe it?” McFaul says of Putin. “I think he does believe that we are out to get him.” Whichever is the case, either sounds like a sufficient source for real trouble. After the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, McFaul doesn’t see a “serious opening” for US-Russia relations to improve until Putin retires, “and,” he adds, “I have no idea when that will be.”

For those who still doubt that history of the worst kind could be just around the corner, check out The Atlantic’s special commemorative issue on World War I. Inside there’s a smorgasbord of provocative essays from a century ago from the likes of Bertrand Russell, Walter Lippmann and H.L. Mencken. Also worthwhile is a fresh piece from Roger Cohen, who argues persuasively that the “trigger points for World War III are in place.” While Putin rallies a humiliated and angry Russia to the idea of a restored empire, China continues to provoke in the South China Sea. In response, President Obama’s red lines are looking dotted at best. “A century ago, in the absence of clear lines or rules, it was just this kind of feel-good hope and baseless trust in the judgment of rival powers that precipitated catastrophe,” Cohen writes.

Speaking of elevated testosterone levels, Time has a cover story on the increasingly big business of selling the male hormone to an aging, insecure male population. Indeed, there are plenty of stats to feed said insecurity — for example the fact that a man’s testosterone levels normally peak in his 20s, then fall by 1 to 2 percent a year. That can cause waning sex drive, depression and hair loss, among other horrors. But inject testosterone and you face the risk of blood clots, sleep apnea and stroke. Elsewhere (in what some men of the world might consider to be a crisis of a similar ilk) horns and tusks are in danger. This time it’s in Africa, where poachers are killing rhinos and elephants by the thousands. “On the black market, slaughtering animals will always pay better than preserving them,” Bryan Walsh reports, noting that as many as 1,000 park rangers have been killed battling poachers in the past decade.