[John Freestone]

Originally Posted by Erin Pavlina

Hi John, I only asked that people not forget those who seek to empower their clients because it seemed like the assumption is that all psychics are out to enslave their clients by making them dependent on their advice. So I just wanted to clear that up.

Sure, I see.

As for other industries, you're going to find people who take advantage of their clients and people who don't. Whether it's a psychologist who prolongs a person's recovery so they can make a few extra bucks, a doctor who orders tests a patient doesn't need in order to earn more money, a lawyer who over bills his clients, or a mechanic who tells a woman she needs new brakes when she doesn't because he knows he can scare her into buying new ones through her ignorance. I don't think we need regulation. We need to raise our future generations not to swindle people, and we need to educate people today to beware of these things, and we need to empower people to take full responsibility for their choices.

You know what, I agree. Before I retired from therapy I was actively arguing against the regulation of therapists in the UK, which will no doubt go ahead anyway, and for some of the same reasons, and a lot of people are arguing that of course we need to regulate therapists and it's a scandal that they aren't already (as they are in the USA). I'm a bit surprised at the difference of viewpoint, and can only put it down to bias, because I 'believe' in therapy and don't believe in psychic reading. It was a knee-jerk reaction and probably not helpful. As you said, regulate the proper ones and there will develop a worse (opps, sorry, you know what I mean) illegal industry.

I still have concerns that I was wrong about therapy and they need regulating as well (always did), but on balance I think it would increase the dangers, and I have argued long and passionately on the subject. It's maybe rather different, but the main reason in therapy, for me, is that if all therapists are government regulated, it only adds to the public conception of them as actively curing a person, rather than helping them use their own facilities and improve themselves. It's different, because I see directive advice as a mainstay of reading (I'm avoiding the p-word, you may have noticed), and therefore giving your power away as a client is more of a natural process and inherent in it, imho, whereas most therapy has autonomy pretty central in its aims. There is also a lot of training you are expected to have, though someone can practise with none at all.

I'm also concerned that in my arguments about therapy, and in yours here, the concerns about the vulnerable and crooks are offset by an appeal to general education and bringing up wiser children, yet these things don't seem to get taken on publicly. It would, of course, be difficult for us to agree on what education means in terms of p... readers, since I would advocate a much more sceptical, though still pluralistic, agenda. Part of what it means to raise wiser children, to me, is raising children who are not superstitious and less inclined to fall into the natural human errors of magical thinking, but I'm sure you can guess my views and won't labour the point here.

But we definitely don't want to go around saying, "All psychologists are swindlers" or "All mechanics are crooks" or what not. That would not be aligned with truth. And then if we start drawing conclusions based on incorrect assumptions we lose.

No, and I have no wish to wipe readers off the face of the planet or tie them up in red tape either, but I would have to say that all so-called 'psychics' are either swindlers or (probably much more commonly) wrong. You suggest that to say that you're all crooks 'would not be aligned with truth', and that if we draw 'conclusions based on incorrect assumptions we lose', but that raises the question of how we reach correct conclusions about things, and (to me and millions of intelligent people) science is one rather well established method (by which I mean a very broad process of public examination of propositions, experimentation and discussion, and not assuming that forces, entities and human abilities exist for which there is very little or no consistent evidence). I'm not sure, without this public comparison of personal experience, how we can ascertain what are and are not 'conclusions based on incorrect assumptions'.