A useful manual for any magician or curious spectator who wonders why the tricks seem so real, this guide examines the psychological aspects of a magician's work. Exploring the ways in which human psychology plays into the methods of conjuring rather than focusing on the individual tricks alone, this explanation of the general principles of magic includes chapters on the use of misdirection, sleight of hand, and reconstruction, provides a better understanding of this ancient art, and offer...

'Will change how you see the world' Derren BrownRadical Thinking is a book about how you view the world. It's about the things that shape your thoughts, from what you notice and how you interpret it, to what you assume, believe and want. It's also about how, if you think in a radical way, you can look beyond your limited view of the world to see the bigger picture.

Since the early nineteenth century, mesmerists, mediums and psychics have exhibited extraordinary phenomena. These have been demonstrated, reported and disputed by every modern generation. We continue to wonder why people believe in such things, while others wonder why they are dismissed so easily. Extraordinary Beliefs takes a historical approach to an ongoing psychological problem: why do people believe in extraordinary phenomena? It considers the phenomena that have been associated with...

'People are emotionally drawn to the supernatural. They actively want weird, spooky things to be true . . . Wiseman shows us a higher joy as he deftly skewers the paranormal charlatans, blows away the psychic fog and lets in the clear light of reason.' Richard DawkinsProfessor Richard Wiseman is clear about one thing: paranormal phenomena don't exist. But in the same way that the science of space travel transforms our everyday lives, so research into telepathy, fortune-tel...

Here are over 40 scary, hair-raising, and frightening stories of the supernatural and the paranormal. These are first-person narratives that are unexplained and possibly inexplicable. All of them have been reported to John Robert Colombo, Canada's Master Gatherer of the Arcane, by men and women from various parts of the country, and they're published here in the words of the informants themselves, the witnesses to these wonders.Here, you will have the opportunity to read about:...

This fascinating story of madness reveals the radically different perceptions of madness and approaches to its treatment, from antiquity to the present day.Roy Porter explores what we really mean by 'madness', covering an enormous range of topics from witches to creative geniuses, electric shock therapy to sexual deviancy, psychoanalysis to prozac.The origins of current debates about how we define and deal with insanity are examined through eyewitness accounts of those treating patients, w...

There could be many reasons why you are interested this book. Perhaps you are just curious about the afterlife. Or perhaps you have experienced the death of a loved one. It may be that you have had an out of body experience or a near death experience or another mystical experience. Or you may be realizing that we all inevitably have to make the journey to the afterlife one day. If you have been trained to respect scientific method you will not just accept tradition or wishful thi...

Madness is something that frightens and fascinates us all. It is a word with which we are universally familiar, and a condition that haunts the human imagination. Through the centuries, in poetry and in prose, in drama and in the visual arts, its depredations are on display for all to see. A whole industry has grown up, devoted to its management and suppression. Madness profoundly disturbs our common sense assumptions; threatens the social order, both symbolically and practically; creates ...

Mad, bad and sad. From the depression suffered by Virginia Woolf and Sylvia Plath to the mental anguish and addictions of iconic beauties Zelda Fitzgerald and Marilyn Monroe. From Freud and Jung and the radical breakthroughs of psychoanalysis to Lacan's construction of a modern movement and the new women-centred therapies. This is the story of how we have understood mental disorders and extreme states of mind in women over the last two hundred years and how we conceive of them today, when ...

The story of Freud's involvement with cocaine and how it affected research long after he died... The book tells of a number of drug related tragedies Freud was involved in including the death of Ernest Fleischl and that of the less well known Otto Gross who was a good analyst, a cocaine addict and has advanced ideas about sex which led him to founding an orgiastic commune in Italy. Freud devotees will be unhappy with the book because it depicts their hero as all too human but it is a balan...

Paranormal and supernatural events have been reported for millennia. They have fostered history’s most important cultural transformations (e.g., via the miracles of Moses, Jesus, Mohammed). Paranormal phenomena are frequently portrayed in the world’s greatest art and literature, as well as in popular TV shows and movies. Most adults in the U.S. believe in them. Yet they have a marginal place in modern culture. No university departments are devoted to studying psychic phenomena. In fact, a ...

Grounded in both scientific acumen and constructive inquiry, this anthology shines a rare, clarifying light on the controversial realms of psychical and paranormal research, surveying reports, essays, and arguments from more than a century of investigation into matters such as clairvoyance, telepathy, and past-life regression.In the past one hundred and twenty-five years-despite a relative paucity of funding and the troubling persistence of fraud-serious inquiry in...