Magicians ask the audience to suspend their belief and allow their imagination to play with the various tricks they present. The senses and a spectator’s perception of tricks.
However, the history of mentalism goes back even further. Much of what modern mentalists perform in their acts can be traced back directly to “tests” of supernatural power that were carried out by mediums, spiritualists and psychics in the 19th century. The argument is that mentalism invokes belief and when presented properly, is offered as being “real” be it a claim of psychic ability, or proof that supports other claims such as a photographic memory, being a “human calculator”, the power of suggestion, NLP, etc. Many mentalists claim not to be magicians at all, arguing that it is a different art form altogether. Doing so associates mentalism too closely with the theatrical trickery employed by stage magicians. Mentalists are sometimes categorised as psychic entertainers, although that category also contains non-mentalist performers such as psychic readers and bizarrists.ģ Mentalist or magician Mentalists generally do not mix “standard” magic tricks with their mental feats. Performances may appear to include hypnosis, telepathy, clairvoyance, divination, precognition, psychokinesis, mediumship, mind control, memory feats and rapid mathematics. Tioners, known as mentalists, appear to demonstrate highly developed mental or intuitive abilities. Theatrical poster for a mind-reading performance, 1900 Performers such as Derren Brown who often adopt this method of performance tell their audience before the trick starts that everything they see is an illusion and that they are not really “having their mind read.” This has been the cause of a lot of controversy in the sphere of magic as some mentalists want their audience to believe that this type of magic is 'real' whilst others think that it is morally wrong to lie to a spectator. They do this by approaching random members of the public and ask to demonstrate their supernatural powers. Contemporary mentalists often take their shows onto the streets and perform tricks to a live, unsuspecting audience. Others, including Chan Canasta and David Berglas would make no specific claims but leave it up to the audience to decide. Some contemporary performers, including Banachek and Derren Brown, attribute their results to natural skills, such as the ability to read body language or to manipulate the subject subliminally through psychological suggestion. Traditional performers such as Dunninger and Annemann attributed their results to supernatural or psychic skills.
The performance of mentalism may utilize these principles along with sleights, feints, misdirection and other skills of street or stage magic.Ģ Performance approaches Styles of presentation can vary greatly. Among magicians, the mentalism performance generally cited as one of the earliest on record was by diplomat and pioneering sleightof-hand magician Girolamo Scotto in 1572.
Mentalism is a performing art in which its practi-Īcles can be found in works by the ancient Greeks and in the Old Testament of the Bible. For other uses, see Mentalist (disambiguation). For other uses, see Mentalism (disambiguation).
Mentalism This article is about the performing art.