talkmagic.co.uk

This thread was actually starting to get quite interesting, lets not get silly and start bickering shall we?

Tomo wrote:Now, scale that up to cancer. The patient feels better, but the cancer is still spreading. Feeling better, however, she abandons the drugs that actually slow its progress and give her the time to put her affairs in order, do the things she wanted to do, and to say goodbye. The "psychic surgery" robs her of that time. No amount of disclaimers and other weasel words can get that time back.

Exactly why I dislike all this psychic healing stuff. If something has been proven in several double blind tests to work, then it eventually becomes medicine. All this rubbish about psychic surgery gives the patient false hope and even encourages the patient to stop taking the medicine actually doing the good (common with cancer drugs), therefore meaning treatment is stopped

I think we can all agree that the placebo effect can be really powerful, but would I rather have actual medicine and have whatever is wrong with me cured? Yes please.

Do you know, one of our league quiz team can't play tonight and the substitute we're playing is an oncologist from Christie's in Manchester. I could ask him what he thinks about this stuff, but I suspect it'll be a lot of swearing.

That's why people should differentiate between complementary medicine and alternative medicine.

The complementary treatment is used in addition to conventional medicine. In doing so, it will hopefully give the patient more confidence in their own abilities to recover, and allow them to feel that they're doing everything they can to beat their ailment. Result: less stress, less fear and more effective recovery.

That's different to alternative medicine, which is used instead of conventional methods.

EDDITED FORE RUBISH SPELING

The phrase 'passive hypnotherapy' just swam through my mind.

I am not overly keen on that psychic surgery stuff either. Placebo effect is one thing. Fraud is another.

Well, I chatted to my oncologist friend last night about the show. His thoughts were that Gary is creating a situation where the patient believes they feel less pain, regardless of the actual progress of their condition. Which leads me back to the idea of passive hypnotherapy.

mark lewis wrote:It seems to have escaped the notice of sceptics that a skilled psychic can do very good and compassionate work for their clients. I have saved marriages, saved people from suicide, given courage and hope to people and lifted people up from the deepest depression.

I see no reason to apologise to anyone.

If the skill is genuine then hooray for Mark Lewis, and what a genuinely beautiful service you provide. But if it's not - and let's face it, the evidence is not on your side - and it's a finely-woven web of deception, cold reading and lies, then who are you to decide that your lies are what people need to hear? And on top of that, who are you to bill people for them?

I'm yet to see any satisfactory evidence for it. Cold reading, on the other hand, now that's something I see time and time again. And after seeing hour after hour of mediums on Living TV making grieving relatives weep for their own commercial gain, frankly, I think it's sick. I used to work at a venue that had "mediums" come and do shows and they'd laugh amongst eachother backstage. One of them whole-heartedly recommended the Rowland book to me, promising I'd forget about magic once I saw "what can be done with the right information". I wondered what he meant until I saw his car.

And here we get back to my old point - it always ends up with people of both camps calling each other names across a garden fence.

Despite being a skeptic, I am aware that many people find going to 'psychic' readers easier and less embarrassing than going to a therapist.

Yes, therapists are qualified to deal with people's emotional conflicts and have training that most readers don't, but that's the situation, and customers vote with their feet.

A good intelligent and compassionate reader knows this is the case and will be responsible in the work they do. If it is all about cold reading, then great - as cold reading is about reflective listening anyway, which forms the cornerstone of counselling techniques. A cold reader learns information and reflects it back to the sitter. Done well, it helps the sitter take a step back and become aware of a 'big picture', where before, they were too close to the ikkle details.

And this again comes back to Mark's comment about the fakes doing a better job than many of the working believers. A good fake will be aware of how their reading is being used. Sadly, there are some others who just get lost in the drama of fortune telling without thought to how it affects the sitter...

So the bottom line is that the existence or non-existence of psychic powers is a very different issue to the rightness or wrongness of readings and new-age stuff.

To my mind, it's not a simple black-and-white issue.

Pete

pcwells wrote:Yes, therapists are qualified to deal with people's emotional conflicts and have training that most readers don't, but that's the situation, and customers vote with their feet.

Doesn't that just imply that a properly trained and licensed therapist, part of a professionally instituted medical body, has patients, not customers?

I think it's worth pointing out (again) the difference between a medium and a psychic. I think it's important because often when the bickering starts people forget. So:

Uri Geller is a psychic. He doesn't speak to the dead.

Colin Fry is a medium. He doesn't bend forks.

Hope that clarifies things.

Paul is right. As Corinda remarked mediums are not at the high end of things ethically.

However I must now address my next remarks to the Manchester Welshman who is muttering about my ethics. I rather think someone like himself who has admitted to burning down buildings but claims to have reformed is hardly the sort to preach proper behaviour.

My skill IS genuine. There are no "lies" or "deception". I don't use a single technique from that rather silly Ian Rowland book and neither does any caring compassionate genuine psychic I know.

And before the child starts to chatter about the silly Randi challenge or sputter that I have to prove myself I should mention that there is absolutely no necessity for me to do anything of the kind. Sceptics always say that the burden of proof is on the psychics. They always omit to mention that the psychics don't give a stuff and don't care about proving anything. Why?

They don't have to-that's why.

Paul is right. As Corinda remarked mediums are not at the high end of things ethically.

However I must now address my next remarks to the Manchester Welshman who is muttering about my ethics. I rather think someone like himself who has admitted to burning down buildings but claims to have reformed is hardly the sort to preach proper behaviour.

My skill IS genuine. There are no "lies" or "deception". I don't use a single technique from that rather silly Ian Rowland book and neither does any caring compassionate genuine psychic I know.

And before the child starts to chatter about the silly Randi challenge or sputter that I have to prove myself I should mention that there is absolutely no necessity for me to do anything of the kind. Sceptics always say that the burden of proof is on the psychics. They always omit to mention that the psychics don't give a stuff and don't care about proving anything. Why?

They don't have to-that's why.

Tomo wrote:

pcwells wrote:Yes, therapists are qualified to deal with people's emotional conflicts and have training that most readers don't, but that's the situation, and customers vote with their feet.

Doesn't that just imply that a properly trained and licensed therapist, part of a professionally instituted medical body, has patients, not customers?

My point was that people often feel a sense of shame visiting a therapist - or feel that they're admitting defeat and are broken in some way.

People might feel a bit silly going to a fortune teller, but it still doesn't feel like the big step or resignation that they associate with therapy.

Yes, it's the wrong way to look at things, but it's the way many people think.

Pete

Many of my clients have been to therapists and found them bloody useless. A psychic is often the last resort. Not always the best resort unless they come to me of course. The only snag with psychics is that they are not regulated like therapists and that can be harmful.