This blog is part of a continuing series on legitimate research in Parapsychology and the possible implications for society. A General FAQ on Parapsychology can be found here.
Past 5 blogs on this subject:
A Well Kept Secret #10: Positive Thinking Meets Global Consciousness
A Well Kept Secret #9: The Ganzfeld Showdown
A Well Kept Secret #8: Psi and Animals
A Well Kept Secret Part 7: Yer Psychic huh? Shut Up and Go Away
A Well Kept Secret Part 6: The Importance of Global Consciousness
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Today's Diary will examine the usefulness of psychic readings.
Years ago, I decided to try selling myself as a psychic healer. While I was in the process of learning what a mistake this was, I was attending psychic fairs as a participant. I got to know a lot of psychics and watch the process in action. Occasionally, I found myself giving information as well, and just as quickly regretting it. But it did give me an appreciation of what goes on, not just for the psychic, but also for the clients. Hooooo boy. What an education!
Let me first dispel the myth of the psychic as a deliberate fraud. In all the time I was involved, I never saw an outright fraud. Some people were definitely bad at it and others didn't really understand it, but no one was setting out to deliberately mislead people. Not one. There are three reasons for this:
First, an outright fake is pretty easy to spot for anyone with even a passing knowledge of how psychic readings work. A fake is going to stand out.
Second, if someone has almost no real psychic skill, they can just read up on Tarot cards and simply let the cards do the work for them. This is the preferred choice for a lot of psychics. It saves them from having to be, uh, psychic.
Third, this field has a low barrier to entry. It is unregulated and has no formal education or licensing requirements. Literally anyone can set up shop as a psychic. People come and go all the time. Consequently, this is not a great way to make money. There is intense competition for available clients and no good way to set yourself apart from the competition. Few psychics are successful and those who are almost always require years of building up a clientele. It is also a lousy, repetitious job. There are better ways to make money, even for a con artist.
To ask the question, are psychic readings useful, we have to first ask the question: for what? What do people hope to achieve by getting a psychic reading? There are several answers to this:
- Entertainment: People get readings just to have a good time and find out if they're any good.
- Specific Guidance: People have a specific question they're looking for answers to.
- General Guidance: People are looking for direction in their lives.
Of the three reason, obviously, any person seeking a psychic reading for entertainment will probably get what they came for. For their purposes, the reading was useful whether it was informative or not.
It is the last two reasons that need examining. Typically, questions cover three areas: relationships, finances and health. Tarot readings are most often set up to address these areas.
In my opinion, seeking a psychic reading for these areas is a misguided approach regardless of how good the psychic is. The answer can almost always be summed up in two words: Do something. Let's look at this in just a bit more detail:
Relationships: Finding the right person requires two things: One: Look for the person where they're likely to be found. (i.e. Don't look for a husband in a bar unless you're hoping to marry an alcoholic.) Two: Be someone worth marrying. (i.e. Rich men value women who are practical and good with money. Duh.) For people in a non violent relationship, the answer is usually to work at it and don't give up. (Marriages that last at least five years stand a good chance of lasting much longer.) These things require knowledge and action. A psychic can't live your life for you.
Finances: Good finances require a good financial education and experience in dealing with people. You get there by spending less than you make. You pay attention to positioning yourself as someone with a useful skill and change things if it doesn't work. It won't just drop in your lap. (As a personal example, my handyman construction business didn't improve because I hoped it would; it changed because I started spending $500 a month on the right type of advertising, which I could now afford because I had enough business. A psychic might provide information vaguely along the right lines, but probably not specific enough to do good.
Health: You get good health by paying attention to your body. Some people thrive on meat, others can skip it without ill effect. Some are sensitive to different foods or chemicals and others aren't. (I have a whole list of stuff I lay off of because it makes me feel like crap.) If your back gets out easily, you do chiropractic and on and on. The point is that health is something you take action on, and more often than not, these actions are self evident. You have to do something. It's another area where a psychic can't live your life for you.
Caveat: Once in a great while, the right person goes to the right psychic on the right day who has just the right information that makes all the difference in the world. I have heard those stories from credible sources. In those cases, the client almost always has a very specific need rather than a general list of problems.
The whole notion of going to a psychic to get something fixed in your life is based on the assumption that with the right information, life will get better. In many cases, I think that assumption is flawed. Too often, people go to psychics when they should be taking action. Even if the action isn't the best one available, it will almost always lead to the right one or at least work well enough.
In fact, in some cases, psychic readings can make things worse.
The psychic is basically a consultant, and everyone likes a consultant to tell them things that they want to hear. Thus, psychics are rewarded with emotional cues when they give good news and met with fear when they give bad news. A psychic soon learns that the more good news they give, the better people like them and the more likely that person is to recommend them and come back for another visit. If the truth isn't good news, many people don't want to hear it. Not every psychic does a good job handling this situation.
Because there is no training for psychics, many don't know when they are crossing the line into therapy, an area they have no business in. At its worst, this is enabling. Here is a comment from one of my readers:
I wish it were all a dream (...) and that my daughter Elizabeth's untimely death was somebody's "idea" of a cruel joke.
My daughter lived in mortal danger in an abusive, violent relationship. I won't go into the particulars regarding her death as the autopsy report has not been completed and may become a homicide investigation.
When I saw the title of this diary, I was compelled to read it. Elizabeth, who was mentally ill and an alcoholic had been consulting a "psychic" for direction as to how to handle this "relationship".
Beth and I had a very close relationship. She sent me (email) copies of all the "readings" she'd paid thousands of dollars for over the past year.
Needless to say, the "readings" were nothing more than what's known in the biz as "cold readings" ie: the readee provides the reader with all the information the reader will need to conjure up all manner of "psychic information".
Sadly, the "psychic" did not "see" Elizabeth found dead in her bed in March of this year. Any responsible human being, "psychic" or no would have told Elizabeth to run, not walk to the police, (as I did on every occasion when talking to her about this issue)and to run like hell away from the monster who may or may not have killed her. If the monster did do the deed herself, certainly her violent contributions to the assult on Beth's psyche (read Gaslighting)as well as the harm she caused to her body.
A psychic was clearly not appropriate in this situation.
My own experience doing psychic readings is that they are hard to do. While it is pretty simple to "see" people's emotional states, getting good information about their lives is much, much harder. Part of the problem is that psychic information normally comes in the form of images and those images are pulled from what the psychic already knows. The images are identical to those received in the imagination or by visualization, so there is no easy way to know if they are true, or just something made up.
If an object, person or situation is hard for a psychic to imagine, then they will probably fail. It is a real art to suspend all judgment and trust in whatever pops in your head. It takes a lot of practice. My experience is that the people who are best at it don't normally want to do psychic readings because they can't do this without feeling the client's emotional state, which usually sucks.
If someone asked me whether to consult a psychic, I would want them to ask themselves if there was another course of action available to them; is there something they can do to help themselves? If they are out of other options, then fine, it probably can't hurt and might even help, but remember, psychics have no super powers. Sometimes the answer can only be found by looking in the mirror.