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>> ^RhesusMonk:
>> ^SaNdMaN:
But how can he be so confident that this would work? It seems like one of those things that would not work on everyone. What if he does the trick and it fails on live TV?

This is called Neurolinguistc Programming (NLP) and is based strongly in Gestalt psychology and a huge amount of statistical data produced in the 1970s and 80s concerning how human brains associate speech, concepts and sensations and what the testable results of those associations are. The actual origin of the phenomenon/heuristic is fascinating (literally a combination of psychology and math), and is a must-read for people interested in how humans influence and are influenced. For a long time it was used as a kind of quick-fix psychotherapy a la behavioral modification in clinical settings (patients would be imparted with associations of sensation and cognition without conscious awareness in order to relieve symptoms). These days, it's used in board rooms and at card tables as well. Not all of it works all the time, but unless you're performing tricks for an audience, no one is even going to know you're trying, so failure looks the same as doing nothing at all. Derren Brown is not just a practitioner of this art, he is a major contributing pioneer; he is, as he mentioned, aware of the risks of failure, and he has even stated that this awareness, imparted to his subjects, is immensely influential in getting the tricks to succeed.


I'm aware that it's NPL, but NPL doesn't work with everyone, just like hypnosis doesn't work with everyone. Yet he supposedly uses this technique in situations where he can't afford for it not to work. That's why I think he's using some other trick and just says that it's NLP.