A mentalist uses mind tricks to read your mind. Mentalists ask you to think of a number and write it, and the good mentalists employ mentalism techniques to read your mind. This happens when there are spectators in the audience the mentalist has chosen.
Ask someone to think of any number. Tell them to add the next higher number to that first number. If they think of 20, tell them to add 2. In front of a group, ask someone to whisper a number between 1 and 20 to their friend and say they can “read” it. Gently place your hands on your temples and count the number of times you feel the muscles in your temples tighten which naturally occurs when you clench your teeth.
Only the person who studied the art of mentalism reads more than ten pages of a mentalism book, which is dull to the layman. The difference between a mentalist and a magician is a mentalist tries to convince you of real psychic abilities, whereas a magician never does.
Mentalists create the illusion that they can read people’s minds, but mind reading is a mentalism ruse. If you have more questions about mentalism or magic, don’t ask a mentalist how a mentalist reads the mind. Mentalism illusion mentalists magician magicians magic tricks Derren Brown telepathy mental book thinking demented imagination. Mentalists use mental tactics to achieve what looks like mind reading or mental influence.
The effect of mentalism on the audience is to read the mind, but when artists such as magicians and mentalists perform, the method and effect are rarely the same. Just as a magician has a dozen mechanical techniques at his disposal either to force you to choose a card or to discover a card you freely selected, mentalists use cognitive devices to read your thinking with their mental subterfuges. A mentalist must be pleasant, charismatic, polite, charming, and courteous for his performance to entertain, regardless of how good the tricks of mentalism are. Mentalists like Max Maven, Finch, and mentalists like Derren Brown reject claims of psychic abilities. Even the Amazing Kreskin rejected claims of psychic abilities, in his later years (at the height of Kreskin’s success, Kreskin claimed he had psychic ability and special mind powers).
Study mind reading tricks and mentalism techniques to help you with mentalism skills and learn the secrets of how mentalists read minds.