Playing mind games

By Daniel Sokol


Tackling robbers, calming aggressive crowds, helping the sick... magicians can use their skill to get out of real-life tight corners.

Magicians are an odd bunch. They spend many solitary hours practising in front of the mirror, vanishing small objects, making them reappear in unexpected places, burning and restoring money, throwing cards in the air or at the ceiling, all the while talking and laughing to themselves to practise their patter and misdirection.

Most of the time, magicians use their skills to entertain, in shows, parties and restaurants. Occasionally, they use them to help companies and organisations. Some magicians advise casinos and corporations on how to detect cheating and fraud, even testifying as expert witnesses in court.

Others act as consultants in theatres, working with actors and directors to perform seemingly impossible effects, such as creating ghosts or producing balls of fire from a person's hand.

Exploiting

Magic combines psychological manipulation and sleight-of-hand. To secretly remove a spectator's watch, for example, you need to direct his attention away from his watch-bearing wrist.

A spectator will look where the magician looks. Once the spectator's attention is directed away from the crucial spot, the magician can remove the watch using a number of methods in two or three seconds.

He will reveal it only later, when the spectator cannot work out when the "steal" occurred - this is known as "time misdirection". Pickpockets have used these powerful tools for centuries, despite the danger in the Middle Ages of execution if caught.

In fact, many pickpockets operated during the public hangings of their fellow pickpockets, exploiting the inherent interest of the scene to steal with relative ease.

A magician's skills can be applied in all sorts of situations, for both virtuous and criminal purposes.

Last April, David Copperfield and two of his assistants were confronted by armed robbers as they left a performance in West Palm Beach, Florida. While his two female companions handed over their belongings, Copperfield allegedly showed his pockets empty although they contained his wallet, passport and mobile phone.

He called this impromptu technique "reverse pickpocketing" and attributed his composure under pressure to his experience as a showman and magician. Yet fooling criminals is but one use of magic.

In the United States, a number of magicians work with therapists to help young people suffering from depression, low self-esteem and substance abuse, as well as victims of stroke and head injuries.

Healing hands

In 1982, David Copperfield reached into his deep pockets to create Project Magic, a rehabilitation programme now used in thousands of hospitals across the world and accredited by the American Occupational Therapy Association.

The Healing of Magic is another successful American project, created by two professional illusionists. Magicians visit hospitals and teach tricks to patients and their therapists, explaining the techniques involved, the psychology behind the trick and ideas for presentation.

Depending on the patient, the goal of these programmes is to improve motor and cognitive skills, raise self-esteem and relieve boredom. With practice, patients can perform effects that baffle their able-bodied counterparts.

Magic and medicine, once inseparable bedfellows but now rarely on speaking terms in the Western world, are happily reunited in the work of these therapeutic magicians.

There can also be more immediate uses for magic - as I found in North Africa.

The imposing Jemaa el Fnaa square in Marrakech, Morocco, bustles with activity. Locals eat and chat at the dozens of smoky food stalls, school children, sitting around enormous vats, devour marinated snails by the bowlful, snake charmers proudly display their writhing reptiles, and story tellers recount tales of yore to huddled congregations.


While I soak in the sights, a monkey suddenly appears on my shoulder. The friendly primate belongs to a local man, dressed in traditional Moroccan clothes, who encourages my partner and me to take photos. A few clicks later, the man asks for a huge sum.

Crowd control

My polite protestations are met only with aggression and simulated outrage. As we walk away, he follows us with renewed anger, hurling insults.

After failed attempts to negotiate a reasonable price, I take a handkerchief from my pocket, wipe my brow, and vanish it. For once he goes quiet, stares at my empty hands, and summons his friends. The handkerchief reappears. They cheer and let us pass.

Why, in an age of special effects and scientific miracles, is magic still alive? Why did my Moroccan friend relax when seeing the trick?

Magicians will offer different explanations. My own view is that magic, in the right hands and performed close to the spectator, is an invitation to wonder, to step outside the ordinary confines of the intellect.

For a brief moment, the spectator's anxieties vanish to make way for wonderment. The Moroccan man, upon seeing the handkerchief disappear, no longer cared for my money. His mind was elsewhere.

Magic can recreate in many adults those sublime, awe-filled moments of childhood. For this reason, magic will continue to thrive.

So if you buy a magic set for Christmas, do not underestimate what lies in the box. Tolerate the early days, the requests for attention, the flawed performances, and the curious mumblings emerging from the bedroom. In the future, that budding magician could prove a most useful ally.

Dr Daniel Sokol is a medical ethicist at Keele University, director of the Applied Clinical Ethics course at Imperial College London, and a semi-professional magician.