talkmagic.co.uk

We've had some discussions on here recently about the validity and moral issues surrounding the idea of letting audiences believe you're "psychic". Well, perhaps this programme might be interesting to see what it is mentalists can be up against when faced with someone determined to believe in them, and also to show just how wide is the spectrum of belief. It would seem that people thinking you can read minds exists in the shallow end of the gene pool compared to what some mothers will believe about their own offspring. From the Radio Times web site:

"Nicola is a woman on a mission. Believing her 15-year-old daughter Heather to be "at a critical point in her spiritual development", she resolves to nurture her "psychic" and "healing" abilities - a decision that appears to entail holding crystals, mumbling about angels and resting their hands on people's ears. Though Nicola is convinced Heather is an "Indigoan Crystal Child" (you probably won't understand what it means, either, even when a woman with dangly earrings explains it to you), Simone's perception of her son is more prosaic. She merely believes eightyear- old Oliver can see dead people. While you may find yourself throwing pieces of fruit at the screen every time Simone and Nicola attribute their child's active imagination to psychic powers, the producers of this astonishing documentary clearly deserve some sort of rosette - or, perhaps, a nice bit of crystal - for their ability to cover such a bonkers subject with a straight face. "


Of course, Fudge the Psychic Hamster is the real thing...

I wonder how much the mother is being paid by the TV company for her children to appear on a programme like this!!

Probably nothing. It's purile voyeurism, but even when people start pointing and sniggering in the street, she'll count the attention of a production crew as validation of the "truth". You've got to feel just a little bit sorry for her, but also wonder what inadequacies have led her to have her child believe in their own imagination to the point of nonsensical certainty.

There is a fine line between picking up on things unconsiously, immagination, coincidence and 'ESP' or 'Psychic ability'.

People see things that could be complete chance as something else because they want to.

Tomo is right really. But we are in no position to judge wether someone is genuine or not, we can however look at how caught up some people can get in their own belifs.

... and laugh at them.


and Fudge is Psychic.

Sadly, in situations such as you've brought up in this thread, it is the parent that has purpitrated the fraud; they have deliberately imposed their own fantasies, beliefs and hopes onto the child, striving to use the child's sense of novelty as a personal meal ticket.

The news show 60 Minutes (I think it was) just did an article on a young Canadian boy that's now got several books out and a mega-million dollar industry growing around him, in that he's said to heal people, etc. via some kind of psychic energy and prayer.... he's been doing this since he was 14 (ish) with mom & dad backing him all the way... probably why he's 18 and still living at home; few trained animals feel they can stray very far from their trainners. I know that sounds cutting, to use such a comparison, but in case studies in situations of this kind, such is far closer to reality than most would like to believe.

I take this kind of situation very, very personal in that I've been "used" by relatives in a similar way and it's not something to be taken lightly. The parents or adults in the life of a child that's being brain-washed to do this kind of work and serve as the focus of things, need to be seriously investigated, annalyzed and taken through the wringer a few times in order to under stand their real motives and then, make them pay for it.

Yeah, this poor sod was on Richard and Judy over here last week.

The problem is, people want to believe there are easy shortcuts to a better/longer/painfree life, so much so that they rarely stop to examine the leaps of faith they're being asked to make in taking them, and instead try to rationalise the silly ideas they're asked to subscribe tom, or the amount of money they're asked to invest.

The thing is, people have to be free to make their own mistakes - except where proscrbed in law, that is.

couldn't agree more

I saw this and it nearly made me cry. At no point did anyone produce any evidence that even tickled my mental curiosity as to whether there could be some kind of genuine power at work. My girlfriend described it as 'a crock of b******t' and she sits in front of tarot cards now and again.

On the other hand they did spout some fantastic potential patter if I ever become a mentalist. The bit about the Indigoan Crystal children being an evolutionary leap forward was pure gold dust!

lol.

breath in the crystal fluid gas

mmmmm...

The young girl didn't exactly come from a 'normal' background - her mother had 7 miscarriages, including the girl's twin sister who is still 'present', all those unborns are considered to be living in the house and playing pranks, and the girl herself sleeps in a shed at the bottom of the garden surrounded by pink fluffy stuff and lots of fairy figurines. The young lad obviously didn’t want to do anything 'psychic' his mother asked him to do and I had the feeling he was just a very lonely little boy with some deep seated problems for which a lot more TLC rather than psychic investigation would be needed. Although we as magicians don’t have a remit to go out and expose, I'm very sorely tempted to forget that at times.

I felt the need to shout at the screen when that woman whose little boy had ADHD took him off the meds because she decided that she didn't like the diagnosis, preferring him to be "seeing spirits". The doctor who did the EEG and indicated that the bit of brain involved in empathy might be working overtime and causing him to see things that weren't there also said it was common in people who think they have ESP. The mum then decided that he had ESP and that this was a better diagnosis. Stupid, stupid, stupid! And God alone knows what she was typing into Google, but garbage in garbage out is still the rule.

And that woman who appeared as if by money (sorry, magic!) to tell the teenage girl that she had a gift was just spouting whatever she knew the mother wanted to her. Actually, has anyone ever noticed that people who go about acting like authorities on this stuff tend to confirm whatever the gullible and bewildered want to believe? No one ever says, "No, sorry mate, I'm getting absolutely nothing from you. No radiant aura, no energies, nothing. You have absolutely no special abilities."

I feel like booking a table at a psychic fair sometimes, I really do... Another study of Full Facts, a stripped, marked Tarot deck and a bit of green baise staples to a tressle table and... what do you mean not ethical?

Tomo wrote:The doctor who did the EEG and indicated that the bit of brain involved in empathy might be working overtime and causing him to see things that weren't there also said it was common in people who think they have ESP. The mum then decided that he had ESP

Exactly. The mother actually said that the Doctor (not a medical doctor anyway) said he had ESP yet that was quite clearly not what was said.

All through the programme so called adults were putting words into the children's mouths and smugly confirming this as 'evidence' that the children were psychic. God alone knows what kind of mental damage all this is doing to the children and how they will feel in later life - I foresee tears and tantrums galore. It was good to hear that others in the psychic movement were not happy with the red haired woman and considered her to be well out of order in dealing with kids like this. Full marks for those others in that case if nothing else.

As for the psychic fairs, it would be very easy to be convincing but I'd guess that a lot of others there would know exactly what we were doing and we'd be chucked out pronto! If 'adults' want to spend money and attend then that's up to them. Involving kids is a different matter and is very close to abuse in my opinion.

Mandrake wrote:Involving kids is a different matter and is very close to abuse in my opinion.

Well said, that Man[drake].

Funnily enough I missed the program in question last night, but did catch an episode of South Park called the 'Biggest Douche in the universe', in which Stan unwittingly becomes a TV psychic by trying to prove that John Edwards is a fraud. Coincidence or quality TV scheduling?

''oh mummy, my spirit guides have hit me and made me fall to sleep, do I still need to do the washing up?''

'not if you say you see dead people into the camera over there honnie. Thats right, just like on the sixth sense sweetheart''