Mentalists often talk to themselves in other people’s minds and see through the mental projections we do. For example, as I write this in my head I see my mom sitting right next to me talking to a friend in the middle of the kitchen. You can imagine my response: “Hi Mom, where you at?”
Many writers, psychologists, and artists have found that imagining themselves to be others helps them see how they’d act in certain circumstances. If you imagine you might be at work and then imagine walking out, seeing a co-worker standing on a nearby shelf watching you walk out, you’ll often develop a different perspective on what would happen. The same holds true when imagining that another person might have just hit you as you walk. The mind tends to see through our projections.
My teacher and mentor Steve Novella once said, “A visual, auditory-like impression is the most powerful of all forms of mentalization; more powerful than any other mental process.” Visualized people are often more persuasive than the actual person. (Novella also believed that visual imagination was the only way to communicate with other people.)
In a study of how people used words to describe characters, psychologists at Harvard University found that while describing the personality of character “caused a statistically significant increase in word familiarity,” the authors cautioned further research to see if “character-based descriptors are equally susceptible to the influence of character traits.” The result showed that people don’t use words that describe the character they’re describing as much as they’d like to.
In other words, imagining yourself to be another person can improve your perceptions of what someone “should” look like, but often leads you down a road of using words other people will be offended to hear. “You can always just let it go because that’s the way it’s always been,” notes Novella.
So when do mentalists think they see through our thoughts and how is it used to communicate?
My teacher once told me: “Don’t have an idea of yourself as yourself. Just think of yourself as someone you think other people would think you are.”
But it sounds kind of dangerous when you think of yourself as something other people would think about you. What happens when someone starts to see you as someone else, and begins to write about your personality in a way that they’d think about you? It can be a very unsettling place where it can feel like your thoughts, words, and actions are about to disappear.
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