Magic Tricks

Propless mentalists will rejoice with this routine. I have been familiar with Mark's Conversations as Mentalism books and loved the simplicity in those effects. My instant reaction to this routine was satisfaction. Fooling With Freud certainly did not let me down.

My main concern with this book before buying was the vague description. In short, you're getting a five phase routine in which the spectators all think of different items and in each one you progressively reveal that thought. The part that isn't included in the description is that you're creating seemingly random lists of different common items to mentally think of. Like the other CAM effects you can write them on scraps of paper at any time and you're ready to go.

The first spectator thinks of an item from a list. You reveal it. The second thinks of another. you reveal it. You then discard the list and the third spectator mentally selects a free thought. You still reveal it. You can go as far as the fifth phase, or stop anywhere in between.

The methods to each phase build on each other and seem more impossible than the last. My favorite part is that there's nothing to catch. There's no equivoque, math, mental yarn, psychological forcing, or guess work. Fans of Atlas Brookings will enjoy the thinking here, and there's a great principle I haven't personally seen in print before that grounds the entire routine. Although I haven't tried it yet on an audience I'm confident you can nail it every time.

What did surprise me is the writing quality. I'm not saying anything against his intellect or grammar or any of that jazz. But it took a few reads to fully understand. The overview of the presentation took four full pages to describe. With that said, no detail was left out, but there was a lot to absorb. The breakdown of methods requires you to fully understand how the presentation plays out because they blend into each other. Even reading the methodology I had to skip back and forth between the effect and the work. A twenty pager so it was nothing to cry about.

One point I should mention is that Mark is a UK performer, but the routine can be adapted to other languages. Now, that doesn't mean I speak other languages or understand other written language. With that said, may have to "rebuild" the second phase from scratch. Fans of Atlas' work will understand what this means.

One last bit of business is that there's a variation from Colin McLeod. The methods are the same, however he gives another approach to performing this effect using a phone and streamlines it a little more. Not much to say here, but for completion's sake I should mention it.

Now the part we all care about. The great wall: the price. $45 is a little high in my opinion. Especially considering that the CAM downloads were less and contained more magic. I can assume the thinking is that its one FULL five-phaser so it requires a little more care. But the book was just a simple manuscript. I shouldn't say anything negative however, because I was very pleased with what I received.

Who should buy it? The routine certainly isn't of interest to the bare beginner mentalist. Its okay to be a beginner, as we all have been once, but those who already know the CAM books know Mark occasionally uses bold methodology. The methods that may appeal to others as "unfavorable," or "difficult." It really comes down to the practice you put in. However, fans of Mark's and more experienced mentalists will have a blast with this.