Derren Brown

[Saz94]

Recently I watched two Derren Brown shows, 'Miracle' and 'Miracles for Sale'. They're mostly focused on exposing how "faith healing" is performed, but tbh it gave me a lot of insight into how things like the Lightning Process can result in people believing that they work. I'd recommend watching. (One of them is on Netflix... I can't remember where I watched the other one.)

I wonder whether Derren Brown would be interested in doing something on the Lightning Process. It's clear from the faith healers programme that he's really passionate about exposing charlatans who exploit vulnerable people. He was particularly angry about how some faith healers tell people that if they don't get better it's their own fault. I think the LP would be right up his street.

 

[Mij]

Psychology ties faith healing to a placebo effect. One simply expects to get better? This can lead to a self-fulfilling prophecy, and can have a strong correlation between belief and something happening.

 

[Dolphin]

I remember one person in my country describing how one healer had great powers and how the healer had told another person that they may find occasionally there arms would move around and they would have no control over them. This supposedly did happen. However I don’t interpret this as showing the healer had any magic powers and instead was a post-hypnotic suggestion.

To become a Lightning Process practitioner you have to get a hypnosis qualification so it isn’t really hidden hypnosis is involved.

I would say it’s likely lots of alternative and complementary therapies actually involve hypnosis and hypnotic suggestions: I’d say there is a good chance anything that involves closing your eyes may involve some form of hypnosis.