What was going on when I was born?

Developers of Herald Center, Manhattan's first shopping mall, disclosed design plans yesterday for the $50 million multilevel retail project at the site of the old Korvettes building on Herald Square.

Twenty-five milk companies have admitted that they overcharged consumers in the New York metropolitan area for a decade through a price-fixing and distribution conspiracy, the State Attorney General announced yesterday. Although the Attorney General, Robert Abrams, said the exact amount of the overcharges was impossible to determine, the companies have agreed to customer refunds totaling $6.7 million. As part of guilty pleas to criminal charges of price fixing, the companies were also fined $500,000, for a total settlement of $7.2 million. A plan for refunding the $6.7 million to millions of consumers will be worked out in the next three to four months, Mr. Abrams said. Two ideas under consideration, he noted, were lower prices on individual sales or coupons to be used for rebates when buying milk.

In their first exchange since the shift of Soviet leadership, President Reagan and Yuri V. Andropov, the new Soviet Communist Party leader, left the impasse in Soviet-American relations essentially unrelieved by declaring their desire for arms control without offering new public concessions. Despite rising domestic uneasiness about the pace of his military buildup and speculation about the opportunities offered by the change of leadership in the Kremlin, President Reagan signaled tonight that he intended to stay on his previous course, pressing ahead with major new weapons systems as the best way to get Moscow to meet his terms for arms control. Whether by coincidence or design, Mr. Reagan's speech urging Congress to approve a new $26 billion program for the MX intercontinental missile came just hours after Mr. Andropov made a major speech in which he declared that ''the policy of detente is by no means a past stage'' but belongs to the future. Although both leaders repeated past Soviet and American commitments to peace and satisfactory arms control measures, Mr. Andropov spurned suggestions from Washington that Moscow show its peaceful intent with what he called ''a preliminary concession,'' and Mr. Reagan declined to moderate his own nuclear strategy or pause in his buildup to see how the new Soviet leadership proceeds.

The Speaker of the House, a Democrat, and the Republican Senate majority leader agreed today to press, in the post-election session, for an increase in the gasoline tax to finance a $5.5 billion program to repair highways and bridges and to assist urban mass transit systems. The two leaders agreed to support the legislation without waiting for President Reagan's decision on the measure. The action signaled a new spirit of cooperation between the Congressional leaders that could presage a close relationship in the 98th Congress, threatening Mr. Reagan's ability to take the legislative initiative. While the President has described the proposal as a highway repair program, the majority leader, Howard H. Baker Jr., Republican of Tennessee, called it a ''highway jobs'' program, and the Speaker, Thomas P. O'Neill Jr., said, ''Our first priority must be to put the millions of unemployed back to work.''

The Dow Jones industrial average plummeted 21.25 points yesterday, finishing at 1,000, as traders and investors engaged in the classic Wall Street exercise of ''selling on the news.'' In this case, the news was the Federal Reserve's half-point reduction, after the close of trading Friday, in the discount rate charged on loans to financial institutions. The rate is now 9 percent. In the credit markets, prices of Treasury bonds plunged as traders and investors decided that the Fed's move was insufficient reason to warrant holding large inventories of bonds or making additional purchases. (Page D14.)

''Unless we demonstrate the will to rebuild our strength and restore the military balance, the Soviets, since they are so far ahead, have little incentive to negotiate with us.

Yuri V. Andropov, the new Soviet party leader, said Monday that the Soviet Union would seek detente with the United States. He also heralded a new drive to aid the domestic economy through incentives and decentralization. Mr. Andropov told a meeting of the party's Central Committee that the Soviet Union would not make ''preliminary concessions'' as a means of improving relations with the United States. He also said nobody should expect ''a unilateral disarmament'' by Moscow of the kind that, he implied, American negotiators have demanded in nuclear weapons talks in Geneva.

The International Monetary Fund's managing director has asked commercial banks to agree to lend Mexico up to $6.5 billion in fresh credits over the next 13 months. While the fund did not tie the new bank loans to its own tentative agreement to lend $3.84 billion to Mexico, sources close to the I.M.F. said that the two were nevertheless connected. ''Without commercial bank financing, the I.M.F. financing would not work,'' a monetary source in Washington said. The I.M.F. had reached a tentative agreement on Nov. 10 to lend the Mexican Government the $3.84 billion over the next three years, a key element in any effort to refinance Mexico's nearly $80 billion in foreign debt, much of it short-term. The request for $6.5 billion by the end of next year was the first indication from the fund of the help that it expects commercial banks to give Mexico.

THE essential foundation on which the patient-therapist relationship rests in psychotherapy is that of a basic trust. - Dr. Judd Marmor, past president of the American Psychiatric Association. Perhaps the most glaring breach of trust in psychotherapy, in the view of many practitioners, is the therapist's use of the vulnerable patient for sexual gratification. And while sexually exploitative therapists were almost ignored a few years ago, a growing number of patient complaints and court cases - as well as new research - has impelled leaders in the field toward seeking control of wayward practioners. A series of recent actions suggest that disciplinary and other measures are already being developed to restrict the still uncommon but now increasingly troubling actions of what one psychologist calls ''the Don Juan therapists.'' - Professional organizations are moving to make their ethical codes more explicit. In December, for example, the American Psychoanalytic Association is scheduled to adopt a firmer standard, stating that ''Sexual relationships between analyst and patient are antithetic to treatment and unacceptable under any circumstances.''

For more than a week, commuters on Conrail's New Haven line have been delayed as much as an hour by safety inspections while the trains were in service. The inspections were undertaken after two incidents in which wheels fell off the line's $1 million rail cars. No injuries resulted. Officials believe that the hollow axles on the electric rail cars are to blame. The officials have decided to replace all 976 axles on all 244 New Haven cars with solid axles. This will take 11 months, they say, and in the meantime, the delays will continue. Some New Haven line departures have been moved up so that commuters can get to work on time, and other schedule changes are being considered.

AT night, bats swooped through the jungle lean - to as the group of visitors to the Amazon lashed their hammocks in place. By morning, the group was picking its dark and damp way along the forest floor, 130 feet beneath the canopy of treetops and the spotty dawn's light. ''Hear that squeaking hinge? That's a toucan,'' said Richard Bierregaard Jr. Moments later, he was training his binoculars on a formation of five parrots that had swept into view. ''That's an odd sighting,'' he said. ''Parrots mate for life. The odd one must be an early widower or a juvenile.'' Judy M. Rankin was gingerly scooping up petals, tendrils and leaves from the ground. ''This one was cut right through by a beetle with very sharp mandibles,'' she said. Thunder rumbled overhead. It was raining heavily, but it would be 10 minutes before drops penetrated the leafy understory to where Dr. Rankin was now examining the bark of a towering trunk. She, Dr. Bierregaard and other scientists here are engaged in a 20-year project, keeping such a watch on everything that happens inside specific jungle parcels that have been pre-selected for preservation in parts of the Amazon that are being cleared for farming and cattle raising. They study them while they are still part of the undisturbed rain forest, then restudy them, once they are isolated, to monitor the deterioration of plant and animal life.

The first prisoners were taken in the war of the tokens yesterday morning, and hours later, Mayor Koch called Gov. William A. O'Neill of Connecticut in an effort to resolve the six-day dispute. But the diplomatic efforts failed. Ten persons - seven of them Connecticut residents - were arrested during a rush hour stakeout at the subway turnstiles in Grand Central Terminal, the end of the line for Conrail's New Haven trains. The 10 were charged with trying to use the Connecticut Turnpike token, which sells in quantity for 17 1/2 cents, in the city subway system, which has a fare of 75 cents.