Hi I'm Mark Edward we're here talking to Ray Hyman
I wanted to ask Ray about his take on disclaimers.
A disclaimer is something a mentalist can do or not do
depending on how they feel about it.  So Ray has an interesting take on it.
So what do you think about disclaimers?
I can tell you that I never did anything, never thought about them.
I did my, six years I was a professional mentalist.
I never said anything one way or the other.
I just came out and said "Look, I hope you enjoy what I'm doing
I work hard at it, I don't make any claims or anything, I just hope that you enjoy it."
That's all I ever said.
So you see everybody has a different way of performing
and I think this is a interesting subject to look at as performers.
To help differentiate what we do from "professional psychics" who do not do disclaimers.
One thing, now in retrospect, I do have some problems, because I undersatand
the problem with mentalism, is much of it doesn't have to be dealt with it
Much of mentalism, unless the people believe it is real it useless, its not fun.
Can you imagine people are going to sit for an half hour I finished my first mind reading stunt in the first few minutes
everything else is redundant.
Why should they sit there and watch it?
If they believe it could be real they watch you and keeps reinforcing that belief
In mentalism as far as a disclaimer maybe you just can't have one.
But I never considered myself a mentalist,
as T.A. Waters wrote once, there are 3 kinds of mentalists
Called mine the psychological method.
He said the way I present what I did is psychology, talking about the different aspects
of the mind, is illuminating.
And he thought that was a cop-out, he didn't like that.
(unintelligible)
The other methods were "this is a trick"
So then there was a third out which was...
The third one was you present as the real thing, you don't have to claim it outright
What do you call that? Implied inference?
Invited inference.
Are you still rolling Susan?  Invited inference I think is really what we are talking about.
Now, I could do it, I think I still everything I've ever written...(unclear)
In 1953 and then in 1986 and then my other stuff in the Italian journal
All the stuff I create I can do real magic, I'm talking about teaching people...
I'm lucky to be in the position that I'm still hired by organizations and stuff like that
And a lot of things related to that... and so I don't worry about mixing magic cause it might be magic
psychological magic.  But when you started out... When I started out if was a different animal
I didn't want people to know I did magic, I kept that separate.
I just sold myself as a mentalist
I didn't say I was a magician, I didn't want people to see I was doing magic.
When you did... (I was a kid) ... you did palmistry too right?
I did everything I could to make money
There you go folks, thanks Ray. That makes sense. Thank you so much for your time.
That's it folks.
