A Second Opinion

        John Gray

 

   John Gray is the best-selling author on relationships.

   His Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus has sold more than 11 million copies in the United States, though there is no reliable evidence it has had any effect on the U.S. rate of divorce.

   In Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus, Gray says one of the problems of his present marriage was solved when, “I pretended in my mind that my wife was my most important client.  I started giving her that devoted and undivided attention I would give a client.”

   How many people reading Gray's book read right over that?  It makes the hair on the back of your neck stand up.  Just restate in your own mind what he said.  Put yourself in the picture.  Your spouse treats you like a client and pretends with you.

   Or, you pretend with your spouse.  If you are a woman, that smacks of prostitution.  If Gray believes it is all right to pretend his wife is as important as a client, it must mean she is not.

   John Gray's second wife was Barbara De Angelis.  John Gray was Barbara De Angelis's third husband. ( De Angelis has been married at least five times.)

   John Gray and Barbara De Angelis put on relationship seminars together.  Though they divorced, they each continued in the industry staging seminars and infomercials, and selling books and tapes. That suggests that whatever glue they found to stay with a later partner, it is unrelated to the relationship advice they peddled.

   John Gray and Barbara De Angelis both claim to have a Ph.D.

   Their alma mater is Columbia Pacific University.  In 1997 Rubin Asher, a deputy assistant attorney general for the state of California, called Columbia Pacific University a “complete scam” and a “diploma mill” offering degrees which are “worthless.”  Rubin said Columbia Pacific University “has been preying on California consumers.”

   On February 21, 2001, a California judge denied further appeals, entered a final judgment, and ordered Columbia Pacific University to pay civil fines and permanently shut down.  (John Gray also says he has an undergraduate and a master's degree from a meditation organization in Switzerland.)

  
    On this page:
    "Once you have been around false love for awhile, you begin
        thinking what it would be like to have the real thing."
 

As Wayne and Tamara Mitchell have written:

“People think an impostor can stand in the stead of love, but it can't.  That is trying to trick yourself out of the real thing.  Once you have been around false love for awhile you begin thinking what it would be like to have the real thing.

“At what point would some people tell our children that false, made-up, worked-on feelings can replace love?  Forget Shakespeare and Elizabeth Barrett Browning.  Children can't be allowed to see this poetry because it will touch their hearts.  You don't want children to grow up thinking there is real emotion, if you are going to teach the false.”

   That is the essence of what is wrong with John Gray.

   Gray also recommends playing Simon Says with a man.  For nine pages he explains why a woman should use “would” instead of “could” on a man.  That is only one of the demeaning examples he directs at women.

   Tamara says, “Can you imagine that a man won't aid you in the necessary tasks of life because you used the word 'could' instead of 'would'?  So, the man you love and are married to is using a silly Simon Says game in order not to help you.

   “That is so ridiculous it makes me want to urge everyone to send their copy of John Gray's book back to Harper Collins!”

Sources:

• Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus by John Gray (1992).  Harper Collins publisher.  For “I pretended in my mind…” see page 188; for Simon Says, see pages 250-259.

• About Columbia Pacific University, its legal problems, and its promoter, clinical psychologist Les Carr, see the Point Reyes Light, December 24, 1997; December 30, 1999; January 13, 2000; March 22, 2001.

   See also California Department of Consumer Affairs, Press Release, January 13, 2000; and see California Bureau for Private Postsecondary and Vocational Education, Press Release, March 12, 2001.

• More information about John Gray can also be found at: www.QuackWatch.com.