If anyone's interested, I recently made a short video explaining my recently released project "Psychology for the Mentalist." I just thought it would help introduce myself and where the idea for the book came from.

You can check the video out here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLeI4MffCoU

Andy,

You mention you are a grad student in psychology. My question with respect to your book and premise is what school of psychological thought are you coming from? Or in other terms who are your major psych influences that focus/govern your view and the respective content contained in the book?

I think he said he was into social psychology. There are no more schools of thought in psychology, if by school of thought you mean Freudian or Jungian.

Billy what I was referring to was Andy's perspective when writing his book, his educational studies have influenced his take and which predominately formed his viewpoint: functionalism, behavioral, cognitive etc.

This does look interesting , I couldn't watch the video as iam at work, would be interested to know the outline of the book. Is this something that is research driven? I would like to know how you went about writing this, with regards to referencing other work etc (if that indeed what you have done). I was a Fan of The Sleights of Mind book, which was a little around the psychology of Magic.

I myself have a Masters Degree in Forensic Psychology, I also did some graduate work around cognitive attention and eye movements, which was based around a coin sleight (french Drop), and how reaction time was slower when the participant followed a moving disc in an arc rather than in a straight horizontal line.

With Regards to WDavis's comment around school of thought, I think you can be open to more than one school of thought.

"Behaviourism is an approach to psychology which focuses on an individual's behavior.It combines elements of philosophy, methodology, and psychological theory."
"Cognitive psychology is the study of mental processes such as "attention, language use, memory, perception, problem solving, creativity, and thinking."

These are both acceptable as theory's for particular effects. I think if he is open to these different schools of thoughts for such a book this would allow the reader to choose which appraoch would be appropriate for there character and performances.

I have been thinking about writing an essay/book on a similar subject and possibly using that for The Magic circle entry.

Dean

To answer Dean's question first, the psychology material in the book is 100% research-driven. The last 25 pages of the book contain the full references to the peer-reviewed work that's cited throughout (roughly 330 references). I was tired of seeing "psychology" thrown around in magic and mentalism communities with no respect for actual psychological science, which is what motivated this book.

As for the outline, if you go to the book's page on Patrick Redford's site, there's a free preview, and you can read the table of contents, foreword, introduction, and a couple sections. He posted that when we first released the book back in December, but it's possible that it's only temporarily on the site.

Now, as for WDavis' question, I can't say that there's any one "school of thought" that I adhere to. As far as I can tell, that's mostly a relic of the past. Contemporary social psychology fuses plenty of approaches to understanding the ways in which people are shaped by and interact with their social worlds. My perspective simply comes down to science. If a theory is not supported by evidence, then it's not worth very much. If, however, a claim can be supported to a reasonable degree of statistical confidence, then count me in.

If I were to really take a stand to answer the question, though, I'd say that the majority of the mentalism book draws from the social cognitive perspective (although you can argue that most of social psychology is social cognition). That is to say that I cover the ways in which people think and how those ways of thinking are shaped by biases, expectations, persuasive influence, etc.

I'm happy to answer any more questions! This is my favorite stuff to talk about.

I have read Andy's book. While I cannot affirm his confidence, in the post above, that statistics-driven empirical science is the only way to know anything really important, his book is very good. Well, organized, well written, with useful insights for the practicing mentalist in every chapter. It takes the place of the book we didn't have before.

George

Reading through the preview it does look like a comprehensive journey through interesting psychology that will appeal to the mentalist. I look forward to purchasing a copy and reading the full book. The only thing I don't like is I didn't get there first!!

I wish you all the best with this project

Dean

This is an extraordinary work for such a young man (from what I can glean from the foreward and intro) , and on a topic that is off the beaten path. I shall procure my copy soon.

I'd love to read this book, but shipping to Europe is prohibitive. Does Patrick have any plans to release this via Penguin, so that I can lump it in with a larger order and save on the shipping? Failing that, maybe an ebook version? Just curious. It looks great, but the $23 shipping charge put me off. Good luck with this one!

Best,
Jinksy

I'd like to know if a pdf version is planned too. I would have ordered this if the shipping wasn't so expensive.

Ray

Yes iam from the Uk too, wow that's expensive shipping charge, maybe someone will take it on in the UK or Europe?

Is there anything for those interested in psychodynamics and psychoanalysis?

After all, we all know that that school of thought has the most explanatory power of all.

Im very much enjoying the read so far (almost half way through). Some highly interesting food for thought and one idea that I will certainly be using as I had the very same thoughts myself. As someone who loves to create I will find many avenues for exploration and themes for effects within this book.

So far, so good, I will provide a more detailed review once I've finished and digested it all

Best Wishes Michael

I can't tell if you're being ironic.

Not being ironic, but yes, being provocative. But I would like to know if anything for the psychodynamics enthusiasts.

Maybe Micheal and Mindfx will take on a few copies to supply UK and Europe

Thanks

Dean

No, there's nothing psychodynamic per se. In general, I don't draw on the clinical psychology literature and instead keep the focus on what I know: evidence-based social psychology. For the same reason, you won't find any NLP in the book since it seems that most of the "psychology" espoused by NLP theorists and practitioners isn't based on much good data. But rather than get into any of those kinds of debates, I just stick to what I know.

There is a discussion of subliminal influence, which touches on the notion of an unconscious, but I'd say that's the closest I get to a psychoanalytic perspective.

After reading the preview, I think it's a great book. As an undergrad in psychology I relate to lots of them (I worked in a social psych lab). Will look into this when I have the time.

Hi Andini, congratulations for compiling the info!

Curious to read this, let's wait to have someone in Europe to supply us

Best!