The psychological tricks of faith healing, explained | Derren Brown | Big Think

Derren Brown explains how psychological suggestion, adrenaline, and changing the narrative around pain can temporarily relieve suffering.

The psychological tricks of faith healing, explained | Derren Brown Watch the newest video from Big Think: bigth.ink/NewVideo Join Big Think Edge for exclusive videos: bigth.ink/Edge ------------------------------------ Changing the narrative around people's experience with pain or illness, combined with a bit of adrenaline and showmanship, can change their condition, says psychological illusionist Derren Brown. Brown has a show on Netflix, called Miracle, that comes at faith healing from a scientific perspective, demonstrating the psychological tricks that can seem so god-like. When we start to identify with a particular ailment and sink into that habit, it creates our psychological experience of pain. The so-called "healing" process of faith healers is really about tapping into the psychological component of suffering. ----------------------------------- DERREN BROWN Derren Brown began his UK television career in December 2000 with a series of specials called Mind Control. In the UK, his name is now pretty much synonymous with the art of psychological manipulation. Amongst a varied and notorious TV career, Derren has played Russian Roulette live, convinced middle-managers to commit armed robbery, led the nation in a séance, stuck viewers at home to their sofas, successfully predicted the National Lottery, motivated a shy man to land a packed passenger plane at 30,000 feet, hypnotised a man to assassinate Stephen Fry, and created a zombie apocalypse for an unsuspecting participant after seemingly ending the world. He has also written several best-selling books and has toured with eight sell-out one-man stage shows. --------------------------------------- TRANSCRIPT: So, I did a show called Miracle, which it’s on Netflix at the moment. And the second half of it was faith healing, which was a bold move because I knew my audiences wouldn’t believe in it any more than I do, which is not at all essential in terms of anything divine happening. And we are talking like that kind of evangelical faith healing people being slain in the spirit and shaking around on stage and their aches and pains going and so on. I had seen a lot of that at work and was fascinated to see if I could get it to work and what that would mean within the context of a show where people are approaching it skeptically like me. And it was amazing it was an extraordinary thing to do and to do every night and it did work very well. What I got from that and what it highlighted was the psychological component of suffering. And essentially the way that it works, the way that sort of healing works, aside from a few very specific tricks that some of those so-called healers use, and incidentally it’s not remotely a criticism of religious belief it’s kind of a scam that hijacks sincere belief in its own name so this is a criticism of the scam certainly not religion or anyone’s belief. So, aside from a few specific tricks that are like magic tricks that get pulled off, w