Love your interesting, thought-provoking work, and I thought your recent seance made excellent telly.

As a bit of a Uri Geller fan (sorry) I wanted to ask:

1)if you think that there is really such a difference between his psychic line and the psychological mantle that you assume? I mean, given that psychology is such a floaty discipline and so little of it is based in solid research trials, where is the difference?

2)if you think it matters? - magicians seem to be a bit obsessed with the whole skeptic thing, but do you feel a magician can create a coherent vision without lying about something? and do you think that the likes of Uri are really being unfair on their audience?

thankyou...

Great question. I did start off with a hard 'psychology' line, but I didn't want to give myself an ulcer. For me, the challenge and interesting part of it all is to be as honest as possible whilst retaining the strength of the performance. It's not about proving I have this or that ability. So I say that it's a 'mixture of magic, suggestion, psychology, misdirection and showmanship', and that's true.
If I have people asking me where they can join a course to learn NLP or some technique, I'll give them what advice I have, which is both where the better courses are, but also why it has to be taken with a huge pinch of salt. I also reiterate, in case they've missed it, that much of what I do isn't what it looks like. I'll be as honest as I can without getting into individual methods, as I prefer to keep those to myself.
However, I'd much rather someone took it too seriously and decided to take a psychology course, than someone took a fraudulent psychic seriously and decided to make life-decisions based on that false information, or become a psychic themselves. For me, there is a real difference there.
It's up to any performer what line they take, as long as they take responsibility for their claims. For me, it's more interesting and defensible to be as honest as possible about it in general, though at the same time I have to be ambiguous about specifics.

Hope that answers the question. I guess I should keep my thoughts on Uri to myself.

db

Could you perhaps PM me your thoughts on Uri?
As I would be interested to here them.
:)
Jordan

Same here!

I guess you misunderstood what he meant by 'keeping them to himself' then?

I would guess similar to mine - Strange spoon bending magician. Also very good friends with MJ - need I say more?

Paula

Lmao nuff said Paula.
Are their any magicians other than Mr David Blaine who seem to slightly fond of him?

Psychology is completely based on research trials. Take a Research Methods class in psychology. It is a difficult discipline to pursue as far as determining causation, but no claims are made by a psychologist that isn't backed by scientific research.


--Richard Allen

As someone who has published dozens of articles in peer reviewed scientific publications, let me back up Richard Allen. The majority of psychologists are empirical scientists who only publish hard data about the workings of the brain. A minority of psychologists are therapists, most of whom are also serious scientists, although there are a few one might characterize as "floaty".

Sorry, I was being unfair, and I didn't mean to knock the empirical scientists - I just meant that many people hear the word 'psychology' and assume that it must be scientific, but NLP, Freudian psychoanalysis, and quite a bit of social are led just as much by unproven doctrines and the stuff that the psychics claim. And (potentially) psychology-based acts do little to make a clear divisions between what is hard science and what is dodgy speculation, though as Derren just said he is careful about that.

But keeping doing your MRI scans, or whatever else you do! Wouldn't dream of calling that fluffy!