Psychology
I find Psychology to be one of the most fascinating subjects that you can study, and for a mentalist it is absolutely essential to understand what makes people tick!
Whether you follow Freudian psychology, the psychology of Jung, or any of the other branches that have evolved, the one common denominator is that we are all, every single person, subject to the characteristics and observations outlined in psychology as a whole.
To understand psychology is to understand the fundamental driving forces that control each one of us, and understanding how and why these forces operate gives you an incredible power of insight to be able to predict and control Human behaviour.
Psychology is not just a new age science that is purely theoretical with no real World application, it is used by sales and marketing organisations, the military, governments, in fact it is in play in all of us, even in our normal daily lives, without us being aware of it.
The initial observations of modern psychology were made by Freud in his dealings with patients in 19th Century Vienna, and his observations and conclusions soon caught the attention of other academics.
Today Freuds original works can be difficult to follow since they are translated from 19th Century German that does not read easily compared to modern English, but it has been re-examined and re-written numerous times in many different forms.
For people wanting to start to study psychology for the first time we recommend reading Games People Play: The Psychology of Human Relationships
In this book Berne takes his experience of how people interact in a social group, and applies essentially Freudian psychology to their behaviour. The difference however is that Berne makes it much more readable, understandable, and shows how it applies to real life.
The idea of the Id, Ego, & Super Ego in Freudian psychology are, for example, replaced by the Child, Adult, and Parent, to explain how each element behaves in context to the others - this practical observation and application makes understanding Freud and interpretting behaviour much, much easier.
This book also broaches the question of group dynamics, that is, how do people behave when they are in a social group, and it opens the door to some truly remarkable, if not extremely frightening works like Propaganda
Bernays is widely regarded as the father of propaganda, or as it is more politely known today “spin,” his works and theories formed the foundations of the Nazi propaganda machine, and of course you can see them in action all around you from present day politicians, through to advertising and marketing companies.
The techniques employed and their obvious effectiveness will open your eyes to the very real possibility that we are not as individual nor as in control of our own thoughts as we would like to believe.
Another area that is fascinating is that of non verbal communication, often referred to as body language.
There are many books on the subject of body language, a lot of them are quite poor and produced for titillation rather than serious study, but there are also some excellent books on the subject too.
Many people poo-poo body language as a pseudo-science, but if you look at the work that has been produced on non verbal communication (or body language) in the animal kingdom, then it becomes clear that there is a very real sub-level of communication occuring, and it is not sufficeint to simply dismiss it out of hand.
Animals by the very virtue that they cannot communicate with language use non verbal cues extensively, and it is inevitable that Human beings will also retain these characteristics from our past.
Although we do not base our normal communication around them, they are displayed unconsciously, as though peprogrammed into us genetically, and it is well worth examining the subject and most importantly observing people to see whether you can identify a definite pattern.
We have included a good selection of our favourite books on the recommended reading page of this site covering all of the topics that we intend to discuss, and we will be adding more specific material to this website in due course.
