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Eyes wide shut

James Delingpole

Wednesday, 18th June 2008

James Delingpole meets a lifestyle guru who gets results

The general rule when writing pieces about the multimillionaire TV hypnotist, bestselling author and self-help guru Paul McKenna is to go in deeply sceptical and to come out less so. Well I’m sorry, but I can’t be doing with any of that.

‘Paul,’ I say, when I walk into his swanky west London office with the chauffeur-driven silver Bentley outside. ‘I’ve got loads and loads of problems, some major, some minor, and it’s my belief you can cure them all and change my life forever.’

To his credit he isn’t fazed. A more pompous man might have said, ‘I thought this was supposed to be an interview, not a therapy session.’ McKenna, however, with his rectangular glasses, shaven pate, beady blue eyes and gravelly voice, strikes me straight away as a regular, likeable, decent bloke with no airs and graces, and a cheerful willingness to do the right thing.

‘I’m from Enfield. I don’t have any magic powers,’ he’s fond of saying. But I’m not sure I believe him — not when, in the space of only two hours, I’ve seen him deal so effectively first with my insomnia; then my depression; then the appalling state of affairs in which, despite being so brilliantly talented, I’m not more rich or famous.

It’s a pity I can’t tell you all his amazing techniques but there just isn’t the space and it might sound weird. But it’s OK, they’re all in his concise, easily readable, self-help books with titles like I Can Make You Rich and I Can Make You Thin. Basically, it involves using mental exercises to rid yourself of bad subconscious habits so as to get you more of the things you want in life.

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schopenhauer

June 20th, 2008 11:34am

Quick easy and lasting cures for obesity, depression, anxiety... And yet not a single published placebo controlled study to show for it. Is Gullible in the dictionary?

3 million books sold - that's about one for every fat smoking anxious depressed adult in Britain. So I guess that we will have a nation of fit, calm people in good mental health... Except that we see no such thing.

So how likely is the 60-minute life time cure for ? Not very likely at all. How likely is it that instead this is rank sharlatanism? Very likely.

How could we tell?
Show us the data.

Show us all the cases, before and after diagnoses, 1 year followup etc, where Paul has attempted a cure in 60 minutes. Not the one or two anecdotes that might never have had anything wrong, but ALL the cases. Lets count the failures and the sucessess.

Not up for it? I thought not.

Best we get back to the real world and the genuinely powerful, but hard, long slog of science: understanding genes, behaviour and therapy.

Barbra Bush

November 20th, 2008 2:27pm

schopenhauer you probably like the term "skepticism" don't you.

What you said was limited. Why? Because you want billions of raw data to prove NLP is the real deal.

Why not just try it and see if it works? Do you think NLP practitioners are worried by your disbelief? NO! If there is no data it means that someone is not giving it. WHY? Because they don't care what people like you think.

In the end of the day you'll be one of those who uses "hard, long slog" science instead of trying something potentially much more effective. But you still don't do it!

Unuseful programs i would say.

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