I'm trying to learn a bit more about Pyschological forces, e.g you ask a spec to think of a card or number but somehow you force them to choose the one you want. but it seems to be a fair choice to the spec.

is there any recommended materials i can get regarding this technique? ^_^

derren brown book pure effect

Check out Banachek's psychological subtleties

Isn't the Banachek book out of print?

It is, but some places still have them in stock

For example at Magic Depot

or purchase it second hand off llamlamer

Thanks for the advertisment, Andy!! :P

Recently i found out that a video in Docc Hilford" Real Mind Reading ". That also teaches psychological force.That video teaches how to mental F**** a card without using any card. Though it is not 100 percent u will get that but at least u have around 80 to 90 percents. GO check out the video when u are free.

Both kenton knepper and derren brown too have it work on how to force a playing card.

Check out both Derren Brown and Kenton Knepper as mentioned above. They have good material on both visual, verbal and pscyhological cues that you can send to influence a person. Kenton has some good stuff in his wonder words series. Teaches quite abit about verbal suggestions and sentence structures.

yeah, wonder words is a very good set of audio series alot of gold inside. Get some books on NLP too if you would like improve your presentation in magic and in your life in general.

I am doing mentalism recently. Are there any recommendation on book for NLP? Derren Brown is really good in this area and i wonder is he selling any book on his work like the staring competition( hope it is not stooge) virtually walk up to a person and asking for his wallet and walk away without him noticing it.

Derren Brown has never mention that he uses NLP, and no, I don't think you can do that with NLP, nor do I think that is what NLP is about. And NLP has not much to do with mentalism.

NLP stands for 'Neuro-linguistic programming'. In wonder words kenton talk about using nlp to improve your presentation derren brown too have talk about it in it book pure effect.

Just because Derren Brown doesn't always use the word NLP doesn't mean he isn't using them. Similarly, for Kenton Knepper, whether you call it kentonism or NLP, it is basically the same.

NLP is something to do with the mind, like in conscious and unconscious state.It is using the psychology of human. I do not know how to explain. Derren Brown did use them in his effect. In pure effect, there is only a brief part on NLP.

Well, you see I am not talking about his book. I am talking about his TV performance.
Also, I am talking about methods not presentations. Presentations of magic effects frequently employs topics that are not related to magic at all, so I never meant about presentations.

Ok, I'm not an expert on mentalism, but I'm quite sure that NLP has nothing much to do with mentalism.

NLP has quite a wide scope and applications. But generally, NLP is used to:

-build rapport
-learning a new skill
-improve communication
-remove phobia and install new beliefs

I have not found anything in NLP which can actually help in magic, unless you are talking about building rapport with the audience.

In my opinion, NLP is telling you a lot of common sense things. Just that they packaged it into some very sophisticated subject by using jargons.

NLP books are plenty in bookshops. For simple and easy reading, check out:

1. Unlimited Power: Anthony Robbins
2. NLP Made Easy: ???? (some Harris guy)

Or you have money to spend, can go for some NLP courses but prepare to spend more than $2k. (But I think $2k can be better spent buying a lot of magic stuffs from Ning!)

I also never heard about NLP before being used in mentalism. Not that its totally no link, and any help into presentation, speech control, it does help in mentalism.

If you watch a mentalism DVD by Osterlind, (Sorry forget the name), he is very good with cold reading, and blind fold act. Another mentalism is Derren brown. Okie, cold reading and blind fold act have nothing to do with mental force. But in the videos, if you are someone that watched through out the whole video, you notice the way they phrased their wordings, and during their teaching, they descriped briefly on why they used specific words. This teaching can also be found in Kenton Kepper's books.

All of this, they doesn't teach you about mental force at all. But it does give you a guideline on where you should go.

In my opinion, Mental force cannot be learnt. you can read up all you want, see DVD all you wanted, but there is no way you can use the same method as they used in the videos to use in your stand.

I once asked PAM how he knows which one the audience will pick, his answer is, he just know. Speechless, he says that, when you perform and perform and perform, you get to realise what kind of speech is suitable for you, what kind of audience you should use as your helper. This make me realise that Mentalism is not something that you can watch a video and learn through practise at home. But it is really an Hardcore magic that require you face problem, address to the problem, and learn, improve.

In short, you can mentally force someone to name an object after you experiement with different kinds of style you learn from DVDs or books. But can only learn it thru experience of performing.

In short, Mentalism is also like a sale man, a good sale man can sell cheap things expensive, a bad sale man can only sell cheap things cheap. To be a good sale man, you cannot go for courses one. learn through the hard way.

Just how i feel about mental force.

Another issue is controlling people's action and doing things at your will, once again, it can also be learnt, but it cannot be targetted on anyone, though you can be an expert in that field, but not anyone will fall into your prey.

To know more about all this, I believe it will be good to start from the books on mentalism, and going towards hypnotise, and understand the principle of mind control, before you can decide whether you are suitable for this kind of act anot.

just my 2cent worth.

When performing pure psychological forces, NLP, structure of sentence and verbal suggestions as well as indirect visual cues are of UPMOST importance. I agree that mind reading has a lot to do with trial and error and learning from experience. But in reality, what it does is that you are conditioning yourself to try out proven phrases, the timing of delivery(of different things to say) and cues that work in sending certain signals and thoughts to others.

Thanks Larry! Your sentence are enlightening, i admire those who can really do well in mentalism, you need like really a lot of experiences to be good at it, but sometime even when you experiment for a lot of times, it will still go wrong. For example even though i being trying out the blindman bluff for many times, sometimes i even got it right at the fourth try. Blindman bluff is something like you ask the audience to think of a name, then ask him to say out 5 names which include the one he been thinking about, then you are able to tell which one is the one he been thinking. My percentage is only at 50 to 70 like that. So i really admire Derren Brown, my idol B)
I try mental forcing before and the chance that the person pick up the card i try to force is 0 percent. It is extremely difficult to perform ( That where ID is there for me :D )

For psychological forces, it takes time to think through and script out an suitable platter that is full if indirect suggestions and visual/verbal cues. NLP is often used in hypnosis as well as by those in the marketing/sales line. I'm constantly trying out different combinations of cues to find out the best ways to suggest forcing certain cards. For example, the two weeks, I have been imitating Derren Brown's video clip in which he asks his viewer online to think of a card and then reveal that his internet viewers were thinking of the 3 of diamonds. I tried to use his verbal cues and had some success a number of times. Other times, I was off by one... as in the case of them guess three of hearts consistently instead of the three of diamonds. I fine tuned and improve my platter and added more indirect visual cues and improved on the timing and speed of delivery of certain phrases and can now force the 3 of diamonds with much better success then before - estimate 8 out of 10 times when asking them to think of a card from a deck of 52. For example, describing asking them to feel and sense the energy, and to see in their minds the colour, see, imagine and feel the bright, vivid colour. Or trace/outline the curves and point of the suit in your mind, etc. These will tend towards them thinking of a heart. But of course, using multiple suggestions throughout your platter to double or triple reinforce the suggestions indirectly as many time as possible. Visual cues are equally important and I use a lot when forcing a card on them - both during the effect as well as even at the start of the effect before I even began my platter. For example, if at a dinner table, I will rest my elbows on the table and then join my two hands together in a casual manner, but with a triangular form.
Also get them to employ all their 5 senses in feeling. For example, ask them to see the colours in their mind, feel the weight of a lemon they are holding in their hands (imaginary), or when asking them to imagine they are in a field, get them to smell fragrance in the air, feel the wind, etc. Use suggestions that work towards your chosen goal. A lot has to do with hypnotic induction techniques (as I have mentioned before, has more to do with suggestions then anything else) as well as useful when doing cold readings. The art of suggestions, as Kenton Knepper puts it in one of this manuscripts/books, (think it is from Miracles of suggestions), a suggestion is "a subtle command".

If forcing a card out of 52 is a little difficult for you, just stick to choosing a number from one to 10.

For starters, most people pick 7. Secondly, say pick a number between 1 to 10. that narrows it down to 8 numbers but to the spectator, it sounds like 10. joking ask them not to pick eleven
casually draw a seven in the air without the spectator noticing it consciously, etc.

Try out different cues, keep what works and throw out those that don't. Say you are doing an experiment at the start will often cause the spectators to be more forgiving if you get tit wrong. Bring along your ID as an out.

Well Said Joel. This is a good example for mental force. Though I still don't know what is NLP. :lol: Anyway, we shall use verbal cues as a key word for mental force, Kenton Kepper really have a few good materials that talks about that. I got one that runs along the line of what Joel have, maybe you guys will be interested.

"Imagine yourself in a dark room, looking up, you saw a round lamp shining on you. This round lamp is moving back and fro, making you dizzy and lost. You looked at your hand, and you saw a card forming up. Its dark and you cannot see very well, even the round lamp doesnt help much."

This is the refined version. Guess what the card is? The card is the 8 of clubs.

But the one thing that this verbal force is, it doesnt always work, and it also depend on how good a story marker you are. Some people, are just good with story telling. Some, are just bore.

Also, I like the idea that it doesn't always work, it gives you room to escape or move around, and might also make you move to another step into the magic. Magic that works 100% of the time is cool, but magic that doesn't, make things simpler and allows the audience to follow your pace of magic. End of story, they will be amazed by the simplicity and that, its not 100% but how he do that, mentalism got this kind of freedom.

Another kind of force is the visual force, where you gesture with your hand infront of the audience to try to force a card or number on him. Its not easy to talk a story with gesture, but with practise or you a big action guy, it wont be hard also.

Thanks joel, for reminding me that. :)

It's funny because when you successfully force a card on your friends, they get impress and sometimes they try to imitate you by going to their other friends and ask them to think of a card. But because they know nothing about psychological forces, they can never get any success in forcing the chosen card. I always cannot control my laughter when they come back after a while and say that they tried to follow me and asked their friends the same question "think of a card" and the card is never right. :lol:

Larry,

I'll use that paragraph to force the 8 of clubs. Will try to play with the platter and see how successful it is. Thanks for that idea. ;)

Sure, bear in mind its not complete, need some more verbal force to force the card out.

Its fun.

What we have been discussing so far are some principles of NLP. All this discussions about using verbal cues to cause spectators to think in a certain way or to associate in their minds certain ideas is part of what NLP is all about. I do not understand how anyone can talk about psychological forces without applying NLP. NLP is a wide field and when we talk about using verbal cues, we are talking about just a small part of NLP, especially in its use in mentalism and psychological forces. NLP techniques are almost always used in hypnosis.

I would not recommend just going out there and looking for books or resources on NLP because chances are, you are going to waste time and money. Sending or reading bodily/verbal cues are only a very small part of NLP and if you just go out there and read up on NLP, you will probably spend more time reading about treating mental health conditions then about magic. Stick to what other mentalists such as Kenton Knepper have compiled.

:off: I just successfully mental forced a card into my friend. :D Thanks Larry for giving me the idea of sitting in a dark room, I developed it further a bit and tried it on my friend. At the end of the trick, I tried asking what card did u see in your mind and he said his face?!?! I was :angry: :( but i thought to myself, he cannot be seeing many of himself so i asked him what number was that? "Ace" When he said that i was so elated, then i ask for the suite. "SPADE" My virgin successful attempt on mental forcing in my life. :!!: His expression is what i feel the most satisfying reward for magic.