The Profile Dossier: Derren Brown, the Psychological Illusionist Targeting Your Subconscious Mind
“We are, each of us, a product of the stories we tell ourselves.”
As a magician, Derren Brown’s job is to mislead the human mind into believing something false.
But Brown says he’s simply using magic as a tool to show us just how powerful our minds are when used with purpose. Unlike many of his peers, Brown is open about the fact that he doesn’t possess any supernatural abilities.
Instead, he uses techniques that we can all apply to our own lives — subliminal suggestion, hypnosis, and body language reading. Inspired by Stoicism, he mixes elements of identity, purpose, and contentment in his acts.
Over the years, he’s become less of a magician and more of a philosopher.
“The world we live in is making constant claims on our attention,” he says. “It’s more important than ever to recognize what does actually make us happy, what doesn’t and what that even means. We talk about happiness like it’s just an easy thing, and it isn’t. The rainbow is a good image for happiness because as you get closer to a rainbow it just recedes. It’s a mirage.”
Magicians, Brown explains, function very much like our brains — they leave out inconvenient facts, tell you a false narrative, and convince you it’s the truth. This is how you shape your reality. “Magic is a great analogy for how we edit our experiences,” he says.
Many of us have formed our narratives when we were kids. We may have been labeled as “the pretty one,” “the smart one,” “the funny one,” or “the unlucky one” — and we have carried those false beliefs with us into adulthood.
“A lot of the narratives we inherit come from when we’re really small, from our parents, who have their own set of frustrations – their own unlived lives,” he says. “And for better or worse, we take all that on board and we go out in the world thinking that maybe we have to be successful to be loved, or that we have to always put other people’s needs first, or that we have some big secret that we couldn’t possibly tell people.”
His Broadway show “Secret” takes the audience on a journey and forces them to re-examine their own beliefs and identities. (I saw it live, and I was amazed to see the power of suggestion at work — especially for a crowd of skeptical New Yorkers.)
Here’s what we can learn from Brown on playing tricks on our own brains for good.
READ.
On manipulating your thoughts: Brown has become famous for his astonishing ability to seemingly read people’s thoughts and control their actions. He has successfully reinvented mentalism for a new generation, framing his feats as a cutting-edge knowledge of the mind and how to manipulate it. In his shows, he demonstrates the power of subliminal persuasion, lie detection, instant trance induction, and mass hypnosis. This one is fascinating.
On attaining happiness through stoicism: In a surprising tangential turn, Brown’s last two books don’t discuss mentalism or the several dozen ways the human mind can be exploited. Instead, they dissect one of the most elusive concepts in existence — happiness. “The rainbow is a good image for happiness because as you get closer to a rainbow, it just recedes. It’s a mirage,” he says.
LISTEN.
On reverse-engineering creativity: In his 22-year career, Brown’s performances have ranged from predicting the national lottery to convincing white-collar middle managers to rob a bullion van. If you want to better understand his process for coming up with such bizarre yet original premises for his shows—and actually pulling them off—then this episode is a must-listen.
On being a kleptomaniac: Between setting his neighbors’ boat on fire and spinning incredulous lies about school that never happened, Brown had an eventful childhood. But perhaps one of the more shocking hallmarks of his pre-adult life is the shoplifting phase he underwent, a chapter he believes laid the groundwork for the manipulative and distractive skills he would later need as a mentalist. “I remember looking around my bedroom at some point,” he recalls. “And everything in my densely populated room of gadgets had been stolen.”
On using hypnosis for self-help: It’s easy to be swept away in the thrill of Brown’s experiments and conclude his antics only pass as entertainment. They, however, serve another purpose. “There's an old stoic lesson about to value what you have and not take it for granted,” he says, alluding to an experiment where he convinced an unsuspecting man that the world had devolved into a Zombie apocalypse. “Between waking up in a hospital, fending off zombies, and rescuing a little girl, he finds all these levels of courage that he previously never had—this is the guy who can't keep a job, sleeps on the couch, and goes drinking every night and doesn't value a thing.”
WATCH.
On the dubious art of getting inside your head: "Magic is a great analogy for how we edit reality and form a story — and then mistake that story for the truth," Brown says. In this clever talk wrapped around a dazzling mind-reading performance, Brown explores the seductive appeal of finding simple answers to life's complex and subtle questions.
On the mechanics of hypnosis: Contrary to what pop culture suggests, swinging stopwatches and swirling circles aren’t the only ways to hypnotize someone. If anything, they are the least imaginative means of getting the job done. In this interview, Brown explains in detail his playbook for influencing the actions of others. "My toolkit is the stories people tell themselves,” he reveals. “Hypnosis only takes on its glamor because of the theatrics used by performers. When it’s investigated in a clinical environment, it’s much more boring.”
On embracing uncertainty: As a man who recently clocked 50, Brown has a fresh philosophy on life: “Things don't always come together," he says. "The only way we can grow is by accepting a certain amount of anxiety."
POLINA’S TAKEAWAYS.
Learn how to spot nonsense: There’s a technique used by many people who claim they’re mind-readers or psychics. It’s called “cold-reading,” which is the practice of obtaining a ton of information by analyzing the person’s body language, age, clothing, and general demeanor. If you can learn how to spot these, you won’t be fooled as easily by a psychic, a scammer, or a manipulator. Here are some basic cold-reading techniques to watch out for:
Shotgunning: In this technique, the mind-reader makes a blanket statement, waits for the participant to respond, analyzes the body language, and then continues making more statements that help him clarify the original assertion. So he may say something like, “You aren’t really enjoying your job, and you’ve thought about quitting. Oh, you are enjoying your job? Well, I can sense that there has been an opportunity that presented itself to you where it crossed your mind to leave…”)
Barnum statements: These so-called “Barnum statements” are ones that apply to nearly everyone but can be personalized to sound more specific to you. So for example, the psychic could say something like, “You’ve recently made a big decision, but you sometimes wonder if it was the right one.” It plays on people’s tendency to take generic information and think it applies to them. A horoscope is a good example of something that could apply to large swaths of people, but we personalize it to match our narratives.
The rainbow ruse: The “rainbow ruse” is a technique in which the reader first assigns the subject a personality trait, and then assigns its opposite. Here’s an example: “You’re a very generous person, but sometimes you feel like you want to be selfish with your time.” In other words, it’s a paradoxical statement that means nothing, therefore it’s impossible for you to get it wrong.
Detach from your virtual persona: All of us have two selves: 1) The one we present to the world (typically via social media) and 2) the real one. Brown recommends creating a healthy detachment from the virtual persona because comparison is often the thief of joy. “It must be very difficult growing up, when that [social media] is really all you know, and you’re comparing that to this sort of horrible, ugly, messy version of yourself that you know, exists,” he says. “It’s hard to remember that everybody else has one of those as well.”
Figure out what really fulfills you: The human brain is great at convincing us of things that we don’t really need, want, or believe. Brown suggests trying this thought experiment: Imagine that you wake up to find out that you’re the only human left on the planet. With no one else around, you could live anywhere you want. You could live in a mansion or a castle or a compound. But the question is: Would you want to? “You would probably find somewhere that was just comfortable and practical,” Brown says. “When you really follow that thought through, it’s amazing how much we acquire and want only to impress other people.” The same experiment holds true for expensive cars, clothes, and other material possessions. Ask yourself: “Am I doing it because it fulfills me or am I doing it so I can impress those around me?”
Stop climbing the wrong career ladder: Brown has excellent advice for college students: Chase your curiosities rather than becoming focused on climbing one specific career ladder. “You can spend your life climbing a ladder only to realize you had it up against the wrong wall,” he says. “Instead, you should be like a frog on a lily pad. You soak up the sun, then when you get bored, you hop to another lily pad.”
Remember that you don’t know the whole story: When meeting someone for the first time, remind yourself that you’re meeting them and seeing a tiny sliver of their story. If they made a bad first impression or if you perceived them as rude, refrain from labeling them a certain way. Brown offers great advice: “Each of us is leading a difficult life, and when we meet people we are seeing only a tiny part of the thinnest veneer of their complex, troubled existences. To practice anything other than kindness towards them, to treat them in any way save generously, is to quietly deny their humanity.”
QUOTES TO REMEMBER.
“We're terrible at realizing what goes on in other people's heads because we are trapped inside our own.”
“Few kids seek to learn a skill specifically designed to impress people unless they feel less than impressive themselves.”
“We are, each of us, a product of the stories we tell ourselves.”
Polina, This was the article that got me to subscribe... I'm also a mentalist...