yeah, I agree with the link - whether its fluke/luck whatever you call it, establishing an individual's baseline reaction to doing certain things is always fun to try and keep in mind...certainly not something to do at a gig, but just socialising - its fun to do...

The thing that tickled me was the old "scratching your nose means you're telling a lie" thing...well, what if I just had an itchy nose? or a mouse was trying to escape from a nostril...or sawdust..

I'm not sure but Kenton Knepper and all "his" students may fall into NLP/pseudo-mentalism, over-using of Dual Reality and word power! (Luke Jermay, Peter Turner,...)

Kenton's "Wonder Words" is based on NLP language patterns.

NLP, by the way, is not "bunk" - well, most of it, anyway. It's a conglomeration of many different techniques, often having no connection with each other apart from coming under the general heading of "changing the way you think". I learnt more about the way the mind works in a one-week NLP course than I did from a three-year psychology degree.

Whether NLP has a place in mentalism is another matter. I'd say that anything to do with the "powers of the mind" is relevant.

Barry

NLP has no place in mentalism as a presentational premise by magician's who know nothing or very little of what NLP is oor how useful it really is. They are misleading the public and doing a real disservice to them. I always thought the use of NLP as a presentational premise was lazy and lame on behalf of those that use it. Surely they can be more creative than that. To lie professionally as a mentalist is one thing - but to lie about being an "NLP expert" is unethical on a number of levels. It is just as bad as pretending to talk to dead people but for some reason those that use it think somehow they are more honest.

Mindpunisher- It seems to me that your reasoning would be equally applicable to those who use terms and premises from parapsychology and who don't have any real knowledge of the field. Are you saying, then, that unless mentalists have studied parapsychology, they should not use terms like "telepathy," "clairvoyance," "remote viewing," "psi," etc.? If they haven't studied astrology or numerology, is it wrong for them to present effects based on those premises?

It is wrong for us to do anything deceptive. Even acting and make-believe are unethical. I realize this now.

Guys, we should all quit and get normal jobs, and stop being so bad.

My 20 years of magic; how will I ever repay society? No redemption.

*shoots self*

Ignore the derrenisms in the article, but the whole "ritual magic" thinking might be where the value is...

http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2272/does-nlp-work

Considering the origins of modern mentalism as an entertainment form, I tend to agree with Iain there.

And I do believe that if a person is going to portray themselves on stage as say, a clairvoyant, it's only proper to know enough about clairvoyance to avoid looking like an idiot or worse, like you're making fun of people's beliefs.

Personally, I find it somewhat grotesque the way a lot of people who "read" tarot cards know absolutely nothing about them, while portraying themselves as well-versed in tarot, or do palmistry without knowing the difference between the head line and the heart line. If you're going to fake something at least fake it convincingly, because some people might believe in it, and feel insulted by the ignorance of a self-proclaimed "expert".

Most people who do anything on a regular basis do so because they have an actual interest in it, and they learn everything they can about it, and can converse knowledgeably about it. A display of ignorance of one's claimed subject of interest is a dead giveaway that something dodgy is happening, that there's a secret agenda, and they'll just know they're being lied to. Not entertained, just lied to.

I can totally see where mindpunisher's coming from if I look at it that way, but claiming to know some secrets of suggestion and persuasion as a presentational premise for mentalism doesn't feel all that wrong to me, provided the person doing it isn't going into erroneous specifics or "training" people in it without knowing anything about it. That would be idiotic, anyway.

Doing it (or rather, pretending to do it) as an entertainment and selling it as an actual reality are the main ethical differences I'd recognize there, really.

And as far as I can tell, NLP is just another name for an area of interest and study that's been around for thousands of years under a lot of different names. In recent decades, even people into ritual magic have leaned more towards describing their own systems of belief as forms of self-programming for success than anything else; NLP is just a repackaging of the same old ideas, defined a little differently, and demonstrated a little differently, as far as I can tell.

I believe/trust in milton erikson's work (overall)...
i do not have anywhere near the same level of trust in the majority of what is called NLP these past two decades or so..but am open to the idea of "stuff" being out there that is useful and useable inbetween those two periods...

selling group tests/exercises to big businesses is a good way to make lots of money - whether its of genuine use or not is another thing entirely...we tend to hear more about the successes, because obviously those companies only highlight the positives...

I think Mortimer is pretty much spot on. I would think it makes sense to learn as much about your subject as possible to add layers to any stage performance. A surface knowledge of a subject will always "leak" in some fashion.

I would have to respectfully disagree, however, with the idea that believers in tarot or palm reading are in any position to "be insulted" by anyone else's level of "ignorance". It could be argued that a performance that treated belief in such subjects with earnest respect would be more aptly described as "grotesque".

It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it. - Aristotle

Martin, I can see it from your perspective, too. I simply choose, when in the presence of people who believe in such things, not to rub them the wrong way. It's for practical reasons, the same way I wouldn't perform at a mason's lodge while telling them all that masonry is just a pile of crap founded on spurious claims of being in possession of the mysteries, when they never had the goods to back it all up. That would ensure I'd never be invited back to perform at a mason's lodge again, and those people pay me well.

Ignorance of a subject is what I was really getting at there, and despite my belief that everyone has a right to pooh-pooh anything they don't believe in, I don't feel it's my place to insult people who believe in things which I might have personally grown out of my own belief in. I'm not there to educate or enlighten them, I'm there to give them a good time with some fun stuff themed to suit their interests. I'm an entertainer, not a debunker.

Doesn't mean I won't drop some facts on them here and there about the true origins of some of their cherished shibboleths, though, if they try to push them on me. As an actual student of occult history for over three decades, I can confidently hold my own in conversations with believers, and they can't sell me on anything when I know more about it than they do.

I actually lost a lot of friends in the magic community over the past few years, because I went back to my roots for a while and infiltrated the metaphysical community. I used to be a tarot reader, and apparently (unbeknownst to myself) had a reputation of excellence in that field, before I took up magic as a hobby. After years and years of doing magic for a living, and rediscovering mentalism, I decided that if I was going to portray any sort of fictional "strange powers" of any sort maybe I needed to see what the people who believed in such things thought about them these days.

I met lots of readers, mediums, self-helpers (NLP included), and yeah, a lot of it is quite icky when I look at it with a more mature perspective, but it taught me a lot about how the public sees what we do, and I learned a lot. Like how important people's feelings are when you're working for them.

If I'm not actually working at the time, and someone tries to sell me on some starry-eyed BS, I don't hesitate to cut it all out from under them. If I'm working a room full of starry-eyed people, I let them think and believe what they will, but I don't try to convince anyone of anything save for the fact that I can blow their minds. Either way, I try to be a gentleman about it. Same thing when someone blesses me in the name of their god(s). I just roll with it and thank them; they're no less human to me for believing in things differently than I do.

Sort of back on topic, I can remember a decade or so ago when pretty much every (mystery) performer I knew was sort of into NLP. What got me was that they thought it was actual mentalism, and a reliable tool for doing "the real thing". They wanted to believe, just as badly as a gambler wants to believe in luck being on his side, or as a guy who can't get girls wants to believe that if only he learned hypnotism he could get girls to fall for him.

Mentalism isn't anything worth a tin poop without presentation, and anything "new" and "mysterious" tends to lend itself to a presentation. And plausible presentations are better theater, in my opinion, than non-plausible ones. What makes more sense to a skeptical and intelligent audience, that you can predict the future, or that you can control the outcome of a supposedly random occurence through applied psychology?

The same effect, dressed in new clothes, and in keeping with the times.

NLP makes sense (at least until enough people declare it to be crap and it becomes unpopular) as a presentational ploy, the same way ESP made more sense when compared to spiritualism at one point.

Times change, people's beliefs change, and we still foogyboo them with our secret knowledge of the forces of nature, as we always have.

I'm just glad there are more presentational angles available than NLP. For a while there, it felt like I was the only one who wasn't trying to prove I had power over others through subliminal mind-raping techniques. That, to me, is just as icky as taking all of a bereaved person's insurance money or inheritance and selling them false hope in the form of a bunch of hot air.

And thank you, Iain, for the Aristotle. I always kinda liked that guy.

Aristotle was a smart cookie alright; although he did believe the earth was at the centre of the universe, that some people deserved to be kept as slaves and that women have fewer teeth than men, so I don't tend to put total faith in his pronouncements.

I think you raise some good points about the presentation of mentalism, Mortimer. I think part of Derren Brown's success in the UK was that he framed his effects in a way that was more "believable" to the British public. In general I would say the modern British are a rather skeptical bunch when it comes to the supernatural or paranormal. The psychological approach really struck a chord with a very receptive audience, and continues to do so, despite Derren's disclaimer.

And I must respectfully disagree with that. Having actual knowledge about the subject matter upon which your premise is based isn't grotesque at all. It's just adds to the authenticity and believability of a performance. If you pretend to be an astrologer/tarot reader, etc. and obviously know nothing about them- THAT would be a grotesque insult to those who HAVE studied the subjects.

Yup.

And even now, it's clear to me that a believable premise is exactly what each and every one of the occult "sciences" offered the public at some point. Frequently, these premises were latched onto by the cognoscenti, the intelligent and skeptical people, who eschewed all that went before as "grotesque superstition."

One day, all of our enlightened ideas about what's real will be viewed the same way. Every golden age of reason is a future time's dark age.

Big picture, is all.

Might be surprised some of the things I've believed and still do. Might be surprised how much I disbelieve as well. I don't take anything for granted as truth or reality any more; when an ancient Greek goddess descends from a hole in the ceiling in the form of a giant sock puppet in front of you and tells you the secret things she told me, then maybe you'll see where I'm coming from.

There are more things in a grain of salt than are dreamt of in any philosophy.

I dare anyone here to be so skeptical that they cease to believe in their own skepticism. Few are ready to take that plunge. It's usually the last bastion of erroneous belief to go.

"Keep an open mind, but not so open that your brains falls out."

What does that have to do with studying background material to create verisimilitude?

Verisimilitude, I love that word. It's one of my favorite big ones.

As for brains falling out, there's an awesome secret, and I wish to Beezus I could find a way to put it into words without sounding platitudinal and/or self-contradictory, but meh. Whatever.

Sometimes, to really get a grip on it, you have to let go of it.

Sometimes, to really find it, you have to totally lose it.

Sometimes, to really come full circle, you have to bend your straight line into a loopity-loop, and return to topic.

What's awesome is that I learned all of this while studying background material to create verisimilitude. Sometimes doing that actually works a lot better than we imagine. XD