solaris152000
05-18-2004, 10:57 AM
Ive done this because I couldnt rfind the replies becuase there was so many post's.
Anyway, you guys are the NLP pro's so heres my question:
Do you belive that derren brown could really obtain his abillites, and powers of suggestion. He does claim that he uses phycology.
Unregistered
05-19-2004, 04:49 PM
(Name: MJ (not the other unregistered in the other thread))
The short answer is "No".
Derren could not perform even 1/2 of his effects with NLP alone, even to a semi consistent manner. His knowledge of NLP (and all the other stuff he claims) allows him however to "present" the image of succeeding in an effect without using traditional magic effects.
Suggestion and the like can be used, but it much, much harder to perform successfully. What a lot of mentalists do is sprinkle their effect (which relies on a fullproof magical principle) with notions of suggestion. If these pay off, then the mentalist can make something more of them. If they don't then they can be covered, the audience won't even know that the mentalist was trying something.
To give a very crude example, Dom mentioned the "number 37" force in the other thread. If performing you would never do the "number 37" force as a trick on its own. You might start with it, if your right then its a bonus and you've done something that people will think is amazing. If you fail, and there is a good chance of failure then you could quickly pass over this and go on to explain that "a lot of suggestable people pick 37, but you've shown yourself to be a little more resiliant to suggestion so I'm gonna have to try harder blah blah blah". Whether it works or not, it forms part of your foolproof effect which in a worst case scenario will show you reading the mind of the person who was "so resiliant to suggestion" :)
Its all in the presentation. You can do a bog standard "pick a card, any card" trick, then talk about "body language" and "eye cues". Explain what they are, then talk about a few different cards in the deck. You can then "claim" to divine their card by analysing their body langauge and eye movements whilst you were speaking. In reality you just marked where they replaced their card in the deck and took a peak.
As i say, its all in the presentation - a lot of tricks can be presented Derren Brown style.