Jean Baer

Jean L. Baer (May 17, 1923—July 1, 1992) was an American journalist and writer focused on personal self-help books and magazine articles aimed especially at women. She is known for her 1975 book Don't Say Yes When You Want to Say No, which she co-authored with her husband, noted American clinical psychologist Herbert Fensterheim.

Jean Baer was born on May 17, 1923, in Chicago, Illinois, to Helen Roth Baer and Frederick Eugene Baer. Her mother died when she was 20 and she successfully arranged her father's second marriage to her mother's first cousin, a psychiatric social worker.

Baer graduated with a bachelor's degree from Cornell College, Mt. Vernon, Iowa, in 1944. She had always wanted to be an actress but felt too insecure so she ended up taking a newspaper reporting job. She then worked as a news writer in broadcasting (Mutual Broadcasting Company and the US Information Agency) before serving as senior editor and special projects director for Seventeen magazine, where she also ghost-wrote columns. In the mid-1960s, while working at Seventeen, one day she was having lunch with a literary agent friend when Baer started talking about doing an article about traveling alone. Her friend was able to sell the idea as a book to Macmillan Publishers in New York. The book, Follow Me! (published in 1965), drew from Baer's experiences as a single woman traveling to Europe, Latin America, and other parts of the world, looking for a husband.

Baer's next book was The single girl goes to town: A knowing guide to men, maneuvers, jobs, and just living for big city women. It was published in 1968, on the day she got married to clinical psychologist and professor, Herbert Fensterheim. In 1973, she wrote The Second Wife: How to live happily with a man who has been married before.

In her later career, Baer put her attention on psychological writings and also encouraged her psychologist husband to write. In 1975, they authored Don't Say Yes When You Want to Say No (Random House.) The book sold over 3 million copies.

In 1976, Baer authored How to Be an Assertive, Not Aggressive, Woman: A Total Guide to Self-Assertiveness in Life, in Love, and on the Job (Rawson Assoc). The following year, she wrote with her husband Stop Running Scared! Fear Control Training: The New Way to Conquer Your Fears, Phobias, and Anxieties (Rawson Assoc). In the book, Fensterheim and Baer, introduce the method of "Fear Control Training." In 1982, she wrote, The Self-Chosen: "Our Crowd Is Dead" (Arbor House), a book about what she called "the world of the Jewish elite" in the United States since World War II.

Baer and Fensterheim's last published book was Making Life Right When It Feels All Wrong (March 1989, Time Warner Books UK.)

She was also a frequent contributor to The Christian Science Monitor and a few other women's magazines.

• 1965: Follow Me!, Macmillan
• 1968: The Single Girl Goes to Town, Macmillan
• 1972: The second wife; how to live happily with a man who has been married before, Doubleday
• 1976: How to Be an Assertive, Not Aggressive, Woman: A Total Guide to Self-Assertiveness in Life, in Love, and on the Job, Rawson, ISBN 0892560029
• 1977: Sag nicht ja, wenn du nein sagen willst, Mosaik Verlag, ISBN 3-570-07650-4, (Don't say yes when you want to say no, 1975, ISBN 0440154138), mit Herbert Fensterheim
• 1980: Leben ohne Angst, Mosaik-Verlag, ISBN 3-570-01257-3, oder Das Anti-Angst-Training (Mosaik-Verlag, 1988, ISBN 3-570-01257-3) (Stop running scared!), mit Herbert Fensterheim
• 1982: The self-chosen: "our crowd is dead",  ISBN 0877953309
• 1989 Was tun, wenn alles schiefgeht?, Mosaik-Verlag, mit Herbert Fensterheim (Making Life Right When It Feels All Wrong, Macmillan, 1988)

Baer married clinical psychologist Herbert Fensterheim in 1968. She kept her single name. When Fensterheim would introduce her as "My wife, Jean Baer," she humorously insisted, "Please introduce me as 'Jean Baer, my wife.' Put first things first."

Baer was good at making matches and made around 20 marriages, including her own father's. In a September 1988 interview with Chicago Tribune, she said, "I love to introduce people because I like to make things happen for other people and myself. I feel you can't just sit around and wait for things to happen, or maybe they never will. I sat around long enough. I don't want to do it anymore."

Baer died of cancer at Cabrini Hospice in New York City, New York, on July 1, 1992. She was 69.