Sublime

In his book Tricks of the Mind, legendary British magician Derren Brown dissects a simple coin illusion based on the justification principle.

In the same way we might imagine travelling back in time to meet our younger self and giving him or her much-needed advice from the future, we can play the same game a different way around: what might our future, older self have to offer us now? How will we improve and learn in ways that will benefit us? And viewing our current and future lives as

Growing up – and the lesson of the ‘good-enough’ parent – is in part a process of learning that our own desires are not the centre of anyone else’s world. We can be needy and manipulative, bullying or seducing others into pandering to us, but we should expect to be resented for it. Where our behaviour is positive and less self-centred, though, some

Our scripts are indeed written in our histories, but whatever our backgrounds, and however traumatic our pasts, the key to overcoming them is to stop telling ourselves the same unhelpful story today, to consciously own what has remained unconscious and therefore governed us, and to regain authorship ourselves. Some people never achieve this; others

In 1848 in Hydesville, New York, the young Kate and Margaret Fox convinced their family and neighbours that the dead were able to produce ‘rappings’ in their home, in the country’s first informal séance rooms. By the time they admitted the hoax (they had found a way to crack their toe joints to create the noise), the spiritualism craze had swept ac

us. It was Peter Turner, a world-famous mentalist, a form of magic categorized by mind reading and other impossible psychological effects. A gregarious and audacious guy, he is also a skilled hypnotist. It’s rumored that he once went into the Grosvenor, a casino in London, hypnotized the roulette dealer, and made off with £40,000 in five minutes.