psychic

How To Be A Psychic

1. Figure out what your sucker client wants to hear.  This is the critical point.  Not that you have to necessarily tell the client what s/he want to hear, but it's important to know what the client wants to hear.  You can figure out what's on the client's mind by telling them "your mind is jumbled up", and then asking for a "seed" from which the crystals of the mind can be coalesced, or something equally new-age oriented.  Any reasonably decent explanation will do, and it's not wise to explain too much.
2. Build faith in yourself in the client.  The more trust the client has for you, the better.  How you do this can vary--it can involve exposing some part of who you are so that the client feels "connected" to you, or it can simply be a motherly look.
3. Take as few risks as possible.  Stick to extrapolation from what you know about your client.  If you can get the client to fill out a "survey" for your "files", there is very little the client won't fill out.
4. Consider yourself as a psychologist--it helps to read some textbooks.  There is very little difference between Dr. Drew and Miss Cleo--it's just that one is licensed and one is not.
5. Try to use "I see" phrases and not definite phrases.  "I see your mother in a casket," is recoverable.
   "My mother isn't dead!"
   "Is she having health problems?"
   "Well..."
   But the phrase "Your mother is dead," is dangerous.  A "no" answer might cause the client to lose faith (see #2).
6. Keep things vague, and let the client connect the dots.  "I see an older woman in a casket," is even better than using the word "mother".  After all, how do you know who the client's mother is?  It might be dear Auntie Florence.  After all, the client knows more about his/her past than you do, so let them do the work.  In this way you can provide a REAL service by helping them talk to their subconscious.
7. If things start going badly, you can always blame the client for keeping his mind shut.  You may wish to disclaim this at the beginning.  "This can only work if you believe it will work.  You must have trust in me."

James Randi offers a $1,000,000 reward to anyone who can successfully display psychic abilities under laboratory conditions.  If you think you can successfully pull this off, you can apply at http://www.randi.org 

Psy"chic (?), Psy"chic*al (?), a. [L. psychicus, Gr. , fr. the soul, mind; cf. to blow: cf. F. psychique.]

1.

Of or pertaining to the human soul, or to the living principle in man.

⇒ This term was formerly used to express the same idea as psychological. Recent metaphysicians, however, have employed it to mark the difference between psychh` the living principle in man, and pney^ma the rational or spiritual part of his nature. In this use, the word describes the human soul in its relation to sense, appetite, and the outer visible world, as distinguished from spiritual or rational faculties, which have to do with the supersensible world. Heyse.

2.

Of or pertaining to the mind, or its functions and diseases; mental; -- contrasted with physical.

Psychical blindness, Psychical deafness Med., forms of nervous disease in which, while the senses of sight and hearing remain unimpaired, the mind fails to appreciate the significance of the sounds heard or the images seen. -- Psychical contagion, the transference of disease, especially of a functional nervous disease, by mere force of example. -- Psychical medicine, that department of medicine which treats of mental diseases.

© Webster 1913.