Gray's central message is simple yet controversial: men and women are different. Their thoughts, feelings, desires and communication styles are wired differently, psychologically and physiologically. Better relationships come from understanding and accepting these differences rather than trying to change one other. His books apply these principles to dating, relationship issues, sex, the workplace, dieting, and most recently, conflict resolution. According to Gray:

"My most recent book is Why Mars & Venus Collide, which works toward understanding how men and women cope differently with stress. I think that's a key factor for therapy today, understanding how stress attacks us differently and how we misinterpret each other and how we can better understand each other's needs so we can support each other. What I see happening is that men and women don't realize how they unknowingly step on each other's feet. The therapist can help be the center person to say: Because you're a guy, you wouldn't understand how important this is, but when your wife expresses her feelings and you roll your eyes or chuckle, it's really like punching her in the stomach. You wouldn't realize it because if you're with other guys and some guy rolls his eyes you'd say ‘wait a second here, I'm making a good point' but you wouldn't feel devastated or put down."

Dr. Gray was kind enough to grant me a personal interview. He preferred we conduct the interview by phone, so the following is from our November 25, 2008 phone call. Enjoy these candid responses from a man who epitomizes contemporary popular psychology.

Seven Questions for John Gray:

1. How would you respond to a new client who asks: "What should I talk about?"

Usually, what I say is, "How do you think I can help you?" If they say "I don't know" I ask them to come back when they figure it out. I'm a tough therapist. Somebody's got to come to me feeling like they have a need.

2. What do clients find most difficult about the therapeutic process?

I don't know, they love coming to me! Sometimes when you're doing therapy with an individual it's important to trace back some of the reactions they're having in the present time to painful memories in their past, and there are some clients who find the thought of that difficult, but then once they do it it's not.

It's like somebody telling you, "in this movie somebody's going to die." People die in movies all the time, but if you know somebody's going to die, you don't want to go. You have a resistance to certain things, but when you're actually doing it, it's not so bad. Like going to see Titanic, a lot of people didn't go because they didn't want to see a bunch of people die. But everybody who went thought it was a great show.

3. What mistakes do therapists make that hinder the therapeutic process?

As a young therapist what I didn't understand was that a major portion of the benefit people get from therapy is having someone listen to what their feelings are and go a little deeper than they've ever gone before. That process can be circumvented if as a therapist you don't recognize the value of listening, and instead you start offering advice on different ways someone can look at something. There's nothing wrong with giving advice, but more importantly, the mistake therapists make is giving advice before they really understand the situation and before the client has the opportunity to really understand the situation. People think they understand the situation, but if you're more patient and take time to explore it, you'll find there's more to every situation than meets the eye.

If everything was on the surface, then the answer would be obvious. Often, the therapist thinks the answer is obvious, which is dismissive of the person's intelligence. If it's that easy to solve, what did you need a therapist for? So take more time to understand the problem, be more thoughtful about it before suggesting something.

4. In your opinion, what is the ultimate goal of therapy?

Well, there are many different types of therapy. The goal of couples counseling is to increase the understanding between each partner and help them realize how they unknowingly sabotage the relationship. Your greatest hope is to point out to people what they didn't know before. You know, if someone's beating up their partner they know that's bad, so pointing that out to them - ala Dr. Phil advice - to spank them for what they already know, really is worthless.

It's helping them to gain insight into the situation and look at it in a different way that they didn't realize. That is the "Aha!"; the insight that can change behavior. As I mentioned earlier: a guy rolls his eyes when his partner shares feelings, which is no big deal with his guy friends, but is a big deal with his wife. And the other side: a woman starts henpecking her husband saying, "You shouldn't do that, you should do this," behaviors that every mother would do with her child, but something you shouldn't do with a man. For me, it's very gender specific.

This goes for the previous question, too. Advice for her is not the same as advice for him. It's a huge mistake to treat them the same because we are so uniquely different, and to not accept those differences can sabotage a whole counseling session. Meaning, to expect a man to react and respond and behave and think the way a woman does just reinforces her own criticism for him for not reacting the way she does.

5. What is the toughest part of being a therapist?

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