CLASES DE ANÁLISIS POLÍNICO QUE SE REALIZA A UNA MIEL

Matteo Perlini (aka Ipe on The Magic Café) is 25 years old. He lives in Italy and studies Computer Science. A few years ago, he discovered Magic, but he soon became dissatisfied due to its lack of credibility and mystery. As a remedy, he began to explore Mentalism, beginning with the study of Corinda, and then moved on to Cassidy, Shaw, Goldstein and many more.

39. OPEN UNCONSCIOUS

PRESENTATION

The conversation is about unconscious, and the mentalist explains:

“The unconscious is our dark side, where are stored our undesired memories. Undesired because they are considered shameful and destabilize our minds, or because simply useless. It would be craziness if we could remember anything, every single moment of our life! However, in the unconscious mind is stored a huge amount of information, far superior to the one in the conscious mind. The psychotherapists, for example, use hypnosis to bring back up lost memories, infantile memories too, with an incredible otherness and richness of details. I would like to try an experiment to test the potentiality of our unconscious.” The mentalist takes out a deck of playing cards:

“For the experiment we need a deck of playing cards. Could you mix them?” The mentalist invites the subject to ribbon spread the cards face up on the table; then, the mentalist runs his first finger above the card indexes, about one centimetre from the cards, from his right to his left.

“Follow my finger and look at the cards.” “Perfect!”

The mentalist invites the subject to square the cards and to put them face down. “You can not remember the position of every card, for sure. For example, what about… the Seven of Hearts?”

The mentalist writes casually the name of the card on a piece of paper. Everybody can see it and the name of the cards stays in view all the time.

“You may not remember consciously its position, but unconsciously you have stored this information. According to psychoanalytical research, some place in your mind, the information about the position of the seven of hearts is deposited. In a moment I will ask you to hold the cards and begin dealing, one-at-a-time, cards face up onto the table. We will see when the seven of hearts will appear.”

“I will try to bring back up a very small part of your unconscious without hypnosis. I will utilize some psychological principles known by everybody. But first, to make the experiment more intriguing, lift up half of the pack… and complete the cut. For the conscious memory a cut destroys the order, but for the unconscious memory this action is nothing. Now, I do not know the card’s location, either, therefore I cannot influence you.”

The subject cuts the deck.

“As you well know, if we follow repetitive instruction our brain deteriorates, our conscious mind becomes weaker and we begin to follow instruction in a mechanical way, unconsciously.”

“The same effect happens when we listen to a person who speaks with a constant and flat tonality, without variation or emphasis. I will try to use these psychological principals; in a moment I will start to call “up”, “down”, “down”, “down”, “up”, etc., in a random way. When I say “up”, I would like you to deal the card face down from the top of the pack. When I say “down”, I want you to deal the card face down from the bottom of the pack. Do you understand?”

“Let your body relax, and free your mind, while I say the “up-down” sequence… as if you would be almost hypnotized. This is very important!” “…and one more thing -- Deal a few cards and when you wish you call STOP, you stop dealing. Ready?”

The mentalist begins to say, randomly, “up” or “down”. The subject follows the instruction; he deals some cards and then calls, “STOP!”.

“You have stopped here. Nobody knew how many cards you would deal before you called “STOP”; maybe not even you.

“Would you like to discard the top card or the bottom one? The bottom one? Ok, discard the bottom one and put it face up together with the other discarded cards. Now, without looking at the face, deal face down the top card. By the way, did you notice that the Seven of Hearts is not come out yet?”

Here the mentalist, if he wishes so, can invite the subject to move just a little bit the dealt pile to check the truth about the last mentalist’s sentence.

“Let’s continue the experiment to see how many cards we have to deal to get the Seven of Hearts. Since the face down card is dealt, now we do not need to draw from your unconscious. Therefore, you can deal all the remaining cards from the top, to speed up the process.”

The subject deals all the remaining cards and the Seven of Hearts did not come out. The mentalist recaps what has just happened and then shuts up while he is looking at the cards. The subject moves the pile and turns up the face down card. It is the Seven of Hearts!

METHOD

This method meets almost all the Stewart James’s conditions. The 13th is not followed: “The spectator deals straight through from top to face, the only variation is when he leaves a card face down.”

There is an equivoque (9th condition) but is not central in the routine and someone can choose to remove it.

The 11th condition is followed at 99%. This is true: when the spectator starts dealing, the mentalist does not know where the predicted card is, nor does the mentalist know the location in the pack of any other card.

The entire routine is self-working; therefore the burden is on the procedure. But the procedure needs to be well-justified. This was the focus of my work here. The method behind it all is very simple. When the cards are ribbon spread, the mentalist looks at one card after the middle of the pack, for example, the Two of Spades, and the card immediately following it, the Seven of Hearts (the predicted card).

After the cut, the Two of Spades and the Seven of Hearts will be in the first half of the deck, close to the top. This could be some problem if the subject cuts too deep (or too little) but the mentalist does not ask “cut the deck”, but he asks “lift up half of the pack… and complete the cut”. So this problem is quite improbable. Despite this, if it happens the mentalist can change effect.

The mentalist can call “up, up, up, down, down, up, up, up, …”, and he continues to call “up” until the subject deals the Two of Spades. Now, the next card is the Seven of Hearts, so the mentalist continues to say “down” until “STOP” is called. When the Two of Spades is dealt, the mentalist says firmly: “Call “STOP” when you want!”

We also have to notice the mentalist, before the dealing process, say: “you deal a few cards and when you wish you call STOP and you stop dealing”.

All this to force a stop in the short term.

Another psychological point -- When the subject calls “STOP”, the mentalist says that none could know when the “STOP” would be called and how many cards would be dealt.

The subject has always dealt the cards from the top or from the bottom, so it would be fishy to ask to deal the top card. Therefore I prefer to use a simple equivoque here. After asking which one he wants to discard there are two cases: 1. The top one: “The top one? Ok, without looking at the face, discard face down the top card on the rest of the pack.”

2. The bottom one: “The bottom one? Ok, discard the bottom one and put it face up together with the other discarded cards. Now, without looking at the face, deal face down the top card. By the way, did you notice that the Seven of Hearts is not come out yet?”

In both cases, the face down card will be the Seven of Hearts.

After the face down card is dealt, it is useless to continue with the “up-down” sequence, and the script justifies this point. But I think is better to continue with the “up-down” sequence if the subject has called “STOP” after a lot of cards have been dealt, because we use the remaining cards to generate a more random “up- down” sequence, to remove from the subject’s memory the almost-random sequence before the “STOP”. But this last case will be unlikely if the script is followed.

At the end, the mentalist can recap what happened. This is a very important point: The mentalist can shape the subject’s memory, removing some details: “At the beginning you have mixed the cards and looked at their faces. After that, to make the experiment more intriguing, you have cut the deck. You have focused on the seven of hearts and among all the 52 cards you have left only one card face down… and the seven of hearts has not come out yet!”

In the recap the mentalist does not talk about the “up-down” sequence; nor does the mentalist say that the Seven of Hearts was chosen by the mentalist. The sentence: “You have focused on the Seven of Hearts” seems to mean the choice was made by the subject.

SHELDON PETERS (SPAIN)