Can anyone offer me any insight into how Derren Brown uses hypnosis & nlp in his tricks? I would love to learn more about that side of the game. Anyone willing to share?

Derren did an NLP Prac with Bandler in 1979, but despite popular myth does not use predominently NLP in his shows, rather using mentalism, micro reading and misdirection. BTW lots of NLPers make the mistake of believing that he uses mostly NLP and hypnosis!

I got an invite to the filming of The Gathering which was shown this year and it was impressive to see him up close in a live situation.
He has written two books, the second being Pure Magic which gives some insight into what he does...

(I got an invite to the filming of The Gathering)i

That was on Channel Four the other day, wasn't it? I saw you laughing away in the front row!

Did you forget the show, as he said he hypnotised you to do?

Yes I was laughing and no I along with all the NLP trainers I got invites for, remembered everything! Actually the ''Derren hypnosis'' section was IMO pretty weak and I'm amazed he induced ammnesia in anyone!
He is not IMO a good hypnotist, but is an excellent mentalist

BTW The book titles now remembered correctly are

Pure Effect and
Absolute Magick

Regards

Nick
www.human-alchemy.com

'pure effect' is the better of the two i believe and shows you some of the nlp techniques he uses, as Chris says nlp is only a very small part of Derrens routine - although he is a master at getting you to believe it is all nlp or mind control.
the mentalist Andy Nyman is a good friend of derren's and i believe his techniques are a little closer to the truth - although be warned, when you open a beautifully wrapped present the contents can sometimes disappoint.

''Derren did an NLP Prac with Bandler in 1979''

How old is he?? (Just out of curiosity because he still looks fairly young)

i think he is about 35 so 1979 seems a little out

According to Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derren_Brown), Derren was born in 1971 - so he must have been a very early starter if he was training with Richard in 1979!

I think there's a lot of overlap between mentalism, micro reading, misdirection and NLP. I certainly use micro reading and misdirection a lot when I'm coaching clients using NLP, and I don't think there's much difference between micro reading to notice incongruencies, and doing it to work out somebody's name or phone number. Is that part of NLP? I dunno. John Grinder and Richard Bandler both teach it though.

I'm jealous now. Any behind the scenes gossip for us Nick?

I couldn't possibly comment...<grin>

I think Nick means 1989, Derren is on one of the State of the Art videos from Paul Mckenna training (not sure which one)

Oops, yes the 70s would have been very early on! Michael Breen said it was 1987, but it could have easily been 1989 as suggested!

I would love to learn more about this side of NLP too. It's the funky side of psychology that motivates me to learn. I've no interest in therapy as such.

I've been to his stage show, and I believe it is almost entirely ''conventional'' magic with a mentalism presentation. ''Sealed envelopes'' etc.

There are some remarks about this in ''pure effect'', which I've read.

I'm not so sure about the TV series ''trick of the mind'' though - - eg the one where he gets the owner of a funfair ghost train to ride on it and be really frightened - could just be a stooge or camera magic, but it looked a lot like classic hypnosis. Ditto some of the other things in that series.

I think he can do more of the real psychological stuff on the TV series, because if it doesnt work, it ends up on the cutting room floor.

In the stage show, everything HAS to work (even the apparent ''failures'' are planned) so there is much less psychology (if any at all).

I was lucky enough to see him just a few feet away for over 90 minutes at The Gathering filming. I was surprised at how frenetic he was and had the definite impression that absolutely nothing had been left to chance with any aspect of what he was doing. As mentioned previously ''the hypnosis attempt'' was IMO dreadful, but more than made up for my some other excellent interactions!

It has to be remembered that he uses NLP as tools in his routine instead of basing all of his routines on NLP & hypnosis.

There are some obvious things that he does using sensory acuity - like detecting the lies told by the professional liar (who could beat a polygraph test).

And then there are things that he does which are suggestions - like getting people to imagine a card. This is done by hand gestures and subtly phrasing things.

For example, to get someone to think of the 3 of diamonds, Derren uses phrases like ''Make the picture really 'bright', see the colours in your mind'' (note: black suits are not bright but dark). Then using his hands he will put fingers and thumbs together, look through his hands at the person and say ''imagine a screen and really see the suit'' (note: the hand gesture is a diamond shape. For a heart shape, if you rewind the videos, he actually draws out the heart shape and says something like ''draw it in your mind''!). Then for the number, he will use 3 fingers pointed, quite obviously in the face of the victim and say, ''imagine the number of spots'' (may have a bit of delay here to ensure that the number is fed right in!). He'd also do something like draw the numbers - ''imagine the numbers in the corners'' and draw the number 3 in each corner. And for extra suggestion might even say ''really see the numbers, bang, bang, bang'' and point three times at top, middle and bottom. This can all be seen in the programmes if you watch them closely enough and rewind them a couple of hundred times...

One of my favourites is a sleight of mouth. He's at a student ball and has been doing tricks all night and it's time for the big trick. The trick consists of getting a member of the audience to shout out the picture that he's drawn in advance. Surprise, surprise, the guy is blind folded and shouts out ''a tractor!'' and is correct. The picture is a tractor! REWIND! Watch Derren's introduction to the audience - ''Good evening. You're all very attractive'' (a tractor)... all very fluid, gets a giggle as it's an odd introduction. Absolute genius.

He's a mentalist/illusionist - his tricks utilise a variety of techniques, not just NLP and hypnosis. There are sleights of hands and mouth, misdirections - all very elegantly done (which is where the artistry comes in).

As for the apparent ''failures''. A friend of mine had a recording of one his ''lectures'' where he says, ''don't worry about the failures as people won't remember them but if you do a trick and it goes really well, milk it for all it's worth''. It's hardly surprising that people forget the failures!