Derren Brown Explained

So, how DOES he do it?

In the opening of his shows, he says that he uses a blend of "magic, suggestion, psychology, misdirection and showmanship".

Essentially, the core of what separates Derren Brown from the myriad other magicians out there is that instead of trying to maintain a state of suspended disbelief, he tries to foster an active state of actual belief in his viewers. Through the use of red herrings, suggestion and psychology, your mind is led down a garden path to the conclusions that he wishes you to make about what you are seeing.

For example, if you saw an obvious magician perform a card trick, and he claimed that he was channeling the spirit of Ramtha to cause one card to mystically change places with another, you might play along just to be nice, but you know, without a shadow of a doubt, that he was using clever sleight of hand to accomplish it. His "patter" no matter how entertaining, is obviously a lie.

On the other hand, you have Derren Brown, imagine he walks up to you, and has you think of you mothers maiden name, he asks you to take off your glasses so he can look you in the eye, says some weird hypnotic sounding stuff, grabs your shoulder, and tells you the name.

You would be left with the distinct impression that he had somehow figured out what you were thinking by your facial expressions, or by how you moved your eyes. Some sort of weird NLP/Hypnosis skill he poseses.

Notice however, he never made the actual _claim_ to be using NLP, he simply presented the effect in such a way that he subtly hinted at it with his body language, and the procedure he went through. He let YOU come to that conclusion yourself. And that makes all the difference in the world. Because, in all likely hood, he had simply met your mother a few days ago, and ASKED her maiden name, or looked it up on the internet.

That is how simple these effects can be. it is ALL about the words you use, and the way you present yourself.

As well as controlling your mind into believing what he wishes you to, he uses another diabolical technique.

Some of the things that he does actually are real! Like when he made people forget their stops on the train, that was a legitimate NLP technique he used.

The fact that some of his effects are actually the real thing puts the viewer in a funny situation, they are unable to discern where the real stuff ends, and the tricky stuff begins, which leads to the fascinating experience he is able to provide.

Below, I have a couple links to some pages that have more information about the actual specifics of the techniques that he uses, and video of him using them.