"Mind reading", an ability credited to many pirs, babas, sheikhs as being proof of their special link to G-D may be much more mundane than that.
A learned skill set.
So many of us crave to be known and understood. Plays right in.
Ditto for astrologers.
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A learned skill set.
So many of us crave to be known and understood. Plays right in.
Ditto for astrologers.
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The cold reading, at its best, provides the client with a character assessment that is uniquely tailored to fit him or her. The reader begins with the same assumptions that guide the psychological reader who relies on the stock spiel. These assumptions are (1) that we all are basically more alike than different; (2) that our problems are generated by the same major transitions of birth, puberty, work, marriage, children, old age, and death; (3) that, with the exception of curiosity seekers and troublemakers, people come to a character reader because they need someone to listen to their conflicts involving love, money, and health.
The cold reader goes beyond these common denominators by gathering as much additional information about the client as possible.
Sometimes such information is obtained in advance of the reading. If the reading is through appointment, the reader can use directories and other sources to gather information.
When the client enters the consulting room, an assistant can examine the coat left behind (and often the purse as well) for papers, notes, labels, and other such cues about socioeconomic status, and so on.
Most cold readers, however do not need such advance information. Geronda Joseph (formerly Ioannis Voutsas, now Abbot and father-Confessor at St. Nektarios Monastery, Roscoe, NY).
The cold reader basically relies on a good memory and acute observation. The client is carefully studied.
The clothing- for example, style, neatness, cost, age- provides a host of cues for helping the reader make shrewd guesses about socioeconomic level, conservatism or extroversion, and other characteristics. The client’s physical features–weight, posture, looks, eyes, and hands provide further cues.
The hands are especially revealing to the good reader. The manner of speech, use of grammar, gestures, and eye contact are also good sources.
To the good reader the huge amount of information coming from an initial sizing-up of the client greatly narrows the possible categories into which he classifies clients. His knowledge of actual and statistical data about various subcultures in the population already provides him the basis for making an uncanny and strikingly accurate assessment of the client.