Brown: As to what the teachers are teaching
I can only imagine that the
teachers who have, maybe more media savvy,
more sort of career psychics and
mediums are very aware of what's going on
and aware of what the tricks are.
It's difficult to tell, but yes.
Dawkins: I've heard it suggested that sometimes
these rather lucrative acts that people put
on of psychic divination and things often
start off as a type of folis a deux,
that somebody and his partner or his father
or something kind of manage to convince
each other that they can do something that
they can't and they sort of rev each other
up. Then when they realize that they're
not as good as they thought, each one tries
to help the other one because they in some
sense genuinely believe it. Have you ever
come across that?
Brown: Are you talking about psychic performers?
Dawkins: I think I am talking about psychic
performers who actually use conjuring tricks
and pretend that they're not. But still
kind of half believe that they really are
psychic because once they had a really good
success which was a genuine accident or
something, and so they are encouraged by this
folie a deux partnership. Maybe the partner
rigs it so that even the performer thinks
he's getting hits which he is really not.
That kind of thing.
Brown: I think the more common route, there are two common routes:
one is the magician who crosses over to the
dark side, who knows what he is doing but
realized there is more money to be made in
psychic readings than there is in doing tricks.
Dawkins: We all know examples of that.
Brown: There is plenty of that around.
The outer route, the sort of stage medium,
going back to Doris Stokes very famously
are normally from show biz stock.
They normally have been taught the skills by
people from that world that see it as part
of performance, as part of show biz.
And, again I think the skills are then turned
rather ugly. That's a very common route as well.
I think, very rarely is there any real belief
in it other than the fact that if you are
spending your life lying to people,
how do you deal with that other than
rationalizing it in your own head after
a while and decide "Well, I do kind of
believe in it. I do believe in intuition.
It may not be psychic but I do believe
that I am intuitive and maybe that does
give me an insight and it comforts people,"
and you start to rationalize it and maybe
create a sort of, a loose belief around it
that follows after the fact. But I think
very few people get into it at the level
from any kind of sincere beginnings.
Dawkins: They do make a lot more money
by pretending to be psychic than they do by
frankly admitting that they are conjurers.
Brown: Yes, it's a huge racket and there is
a very fine line to be tread. In my world
I am on the one hand trying to create a
magic illusion, on the other hand wanting
to be honest about it as well and
kind of show people a bit of what it is.
It's a difficult line to tread. I think if
you're morally really not too fast about it,
it comes down to a lot of the justification
that psychics give is that it comforts people.
And my feeling on that is, if they're lies,
who are you to decide that your lies are
what people need to comfort them?
It's a twisted logic. And I think that the reason, if you
have lost someone dear to you, and I'm
trampling all over those memories by
telling you they are here now saying this
and that, I mean that's none of my business.
And if I'm just doing it because I can earn
some money out of it, when you watch these
people at work, so much of it is ego.
Some of the mediums, these spiritualists,
especially the ones who aren't so good, they
just look like second rate stage hypnotists
that you might see in a pub or something.
It's horrendous. It's that I find really quite ugly.
Dawkins: Michael Shermer in one of his books
has a story about how he was on stage with
a medium who was calling up spirits and
talking to people about what their dead
relatives said. Shermer unmasked it. He
explained on the stage about cold reading.
Told the audience how it was done. And
afterwards several people in the audiecnce
came up, absolutely furious with him,
because he had shattered their illusions.
They seemed, It wasn't because he shattered other
people's illusions. It was that he shattered
theirs. Somehow it was thought to be cruel.
When people were deriving comfort and
consolation from being deceived in this way,
it was cruel to break that deception.
Brown: It's a question of sensitivities.
I think in the bigger picture it's crueler to be
taken in by that deception. It's crueler.
If you are somebody who is, I've knows cases
of people who have lost somebody. Lost a
child that is so dear to them, and they cannot
get over the fact that they have lost a child
and become addicted to these charlatans,
for want of a better word. And that to me
is as cruel as it can be. How you handle,
I don't see it as a mission to turn every
believer into a non-believer, but I think it's
important to get that message out so
people can take it on board and understand
it and have more information. Because if
you have more information you can make better
decisions. On an individual basis, I think
you have to be terribly sensitive in how you handle that.
And I think, maybe sometimes in some desperate situations
you decide maybe it's better left. Maybe that
person should just have that illusion
and live with it, I don't know.
Dawkins: I am going to go to a seance where
a medium will no doubt call up dead
relatives of people in the audience and things.
Can you give me some tips for what to look
out for? What kind of tricks to be aware of?
Because I'm naive in this. I'm untrained
and it would be good to have some sort of
psychology wisdom to look out for.
Brown: I think you'll find it probably
disappointedly transparent. I think with
spiritualist services a big difference is that the
medium doesn't really have to do any work because
he has a whole room of believers. And that's
the difference. If you approach any psychic
with any sort of skepticism you will see
through pretty much all of it unless they
happen to get lucky. If you go there as a
believer of course you are going to want to
make everything fit. And if you are going
to a church service every Tuesday, or
I think it's normally Tuesday they do these
things, and you are desperate, desperate
maybe this will be the week that maybe the
medium will get in touch with Albert or
whoever I've lost, you will do
everything to grab at it. So they don't have
to really to do a lot of work. And if it's,
something you also have to be aware of,
if it's a group there that the medium is familiar
with he will know a lot of their stories already.
A very common thing with TV psychics is that
when the cameras are off they have a chat
with people in the audience and find out
who would like someone to come
Dawkins: Sometimes it's as transparent as that? Brown: Transparent as that.
They don't even need stooges in the audience
to even do it themselves.
Brown: What they often do is they bring
their own clients with them. Come along
to the filming because I think something
is really gonna come through on that day.
Pick the ones that cry a lot. Bring them
along to the filming. But very commonly
before filming starts they come out and have
a chat with the audience, because again,
they are all believers. "Is there anyone
who has lost someone who drowned in a
ok, well if anybody comes through that's
drowned I will know that will be for you."
So much of that work is done before.
Dawkins: It's just so easy isn't, it when you think about it?
Brown: It's tremendous. When you are then
actually doing the, when you are there and
the things happen, the things to listen out
for, the most common, it varies from
medium to medium and they all have their
different styles. The best ones just keep
talking. They know the value of just really not stopping.
And just bulldozing over any response from
the audience. The worst ones pause too much.
They get into too much discussion. They are
found out. It's creating the illusion to the
whole room that the medium is hitting one
thing after another. Whereas if you really
pay attention to what the person is saying,
very often you will see they look a bit
bemused and a bit bewildered. That does
tend to happen. Again, epends on the style of the
medium. The most common pattern is going to
be throwing out a sort of a half statement.
That kind of thing of you know, "Have you lost..."
maybe throwing out a name is the simplest
thing. "I'm getting the name Albert. Does
that mean anything to anybody? Find that
for me? Albert? Someone over here?
Or is it the lady over there?" And then they
the person in the audience will supply
the information by "Yes that was my husband."
And then you get the medium will add that
information. Now she knows its the husband,
whereas it could have been anything.
It could have been that name of the person
in the audience Albert. It could have been
a friend of yours in the audience. It
could have been someone who died.
It could have been anything. But now she
knows it's the husband. She then feeds that
back, or he feeds that back by saying
"That's right. It's your husband here and
he's telling me that you were a lovely wife,"
and moves on as if he had said it was the
husband himself. And that is a very common
pattern all the way through. You get a
statement that is made that's vague.
"I am seeing something to do with an
accident maybe involving water."
You go, "Yes that's right when I was young."
He goes, "He's showing me when you were
a kid and he is saying even then he was
there looking after you when that happened."
And you are amazed that he has picked up
on this memory. Or you say "Yes that's right,
the dead person died because of an accident
in water." And then I will say "Yes that is
right he is telling me that is how he passed
away. That he drowned." And I will turn
whatever you say...I throw out some words
you give me the meaning, and then I carry
on, I reiterrate, I feed that back to you as
if that is what I intended from the start.