How to become a mentalist
The theory behind mentalism tricks is easy to follow. Plus some of the mentalism tricks are easy to learn. But some take more practice and skill, where patience is key. After that it’s down to you to put your spin on the mentalism trick of your choice. The tricks themselves don’t take much time to do, it’s the showmanship that counts, which is probably 90% of the performance.
As with magic, the biggest secret behind mentalism is how the human mind can be tricked. A human mind, despite how amazing it is, does have its flaws. This is what is at the heart of mentalism secrets, which is to take advantage of those flaws. Mentalists use suggestion, misdirection and trickery to fool their audiences, leaving people believing the mentalist can read minds.
To get the most out of the mentalism tricks I explain and reveal, you are better to spend time working out how the trick is done, before you read the answer. I suggest you watch the video a few times, stop it, rewind it and replay it until you’ve worked it out for yourself. Which in this case is how Derren Brown does his mentalism card trick.
Mentalists don’t actually read minds, but instead create illusions so it appears that they’ve read a person’s mind. However, through learning how to read body language and subconscious communication, it’s possible to read a persons thoughts. This is not actual mind reading in the true sense of telepathy. But unconscious behaviours can be read by developing this skill to uncover a person’s thoughts.
Mentalist and illusionist Derren Brown uses a combination of shape projection, word control and image suggestion. These clever techniques misdirect you to choose the two shapes he wanted you to choose, as well as two colours. Before you read the answer, watch the video one more time. See if you can spot how he does it before you see the mentalism secret revealed. This way you’ll benefit more from the revealed answer below. This mentalism secret is provided to help you to learn mentalism.
To explain ‘what is mentalism,’ it’s required to understand a bit about the mind and how this works. Mentalism focuses on mental perception and thought processes, but in many of the techniques used, mentalism taps into the subconscious mind. Mentalism can appear that the performing mentalist is telepathic, a clairvoyant, a medium or a psychic. When in fact a mentalist is none of those. It uses clever mind control to give the perception of all these things, when in fact people are having their minds controlled or their body language read, or both.
