Feb. 25, 2006 Psychology has an improbable new rock star in Steven Hayes, a 57-year-old University of Nevada professor whose newest book, "Get Out of Your Mind and Into Your Life," coauthored with Spencer Smith, earned him a splashy profile in the Feb. 13 edition of Time magazine.

Why? Look no further than Time's summation of the radical message of "Get Out of Your Mind": "It says at the outset that its advice cannot cure the reader's pain ... it advises sufferers not to fight negative feelings but to accept them as part of life. Happiness, the book says, is not normal." And there it is again: "Happiness isn't normal." It's that maxim -- along with the first sentence of the book, "People suffer" -- that grabs you.

The above is part of this interview that you can read in full but contains this very spot-on question and answer about the catchphrase "Happiness isn't normal":

What does that mean? Could you give a specific example?
Say you've been betrayed in love. Now, the reasonable, sensible thing to do is say, "I'm not going to be that vulnerable again." But precisely the reason you loved to begin with was because you wanted to be intimate, known, connected. That's the reason it hurt so much. But because you don't want to be vulnerable, it prevents you from being connected and intimate, even if you are in a relationship. Now, would a person who's living in a relationship like that say they're happy? They might. But do they have the intimacy and connection they so badly want? No. We have to ask why it is that we have such issues of substance abuse and addiction, self-control problems and even suicide when most people say they're happy. It's because most people aren't living the ways they want to be living, and that comes from how they're managing their own pain.

Anyway, even though much of what he says sounds like Scott Peck's A Road Less Traveled, the interview is short and interesting.