How do you get an ordinary person to steal £100,000?
This is an archived post, originally posted on cohost
When I was thirteen, I watched a 1-hour special where self-proclaimed "psychological illusionist" Derren Brown, appeared to manipulate ordinary people to commit an armed robbery. The show was called The Heist and you can watch it here on Youtube. It makes for compelling viewing even to this day, and I recommend giving it a watch if this article intrigues you.
Seventeen years later, though I have great respect for Brown's ability to perform his tricks, I have come to realize much of what he does is stage magic dressed up with a lot of bullshit to convince his audience he is somehow manipulating them unconsciously. At his stage shows he'll ask completely irrelevant (but entertaining) questions to distract the audience from the fact he is doing simple tricks for most of the show.
But for The Heist, that explanation never seemed to quite fit. And as my favourite special, and the one that I have continually come back to over the last 17 years, I was never quite satisfied with any theories I could come up with.
But now, I finally understand. I've cracked the code. Seen through the misdirection.
The short answer? It's hypnosis. But that doesn't quite tell the whole story. So, if you'll indulge me, let's go on a journey through the show, take a look at how the hypnosis is implemented, and the reasons that, despite my past admiration for the man, I take some issue with how he presents what he does.
Your first question might be: "Hey Rhea, isn't Derren Brown well known for using hypnosis? Shouldn't it have been obvious from the start he was just hypnotising them?"
And herein lies the issue with the program. Derren claims, several times throughout the course of the show, that hypnosis does not have the power that it can, or downplays its effects. The first instance of this comes just after the opening titles:
How do you persuade somebody to do something they would not normally be prepared to do? Some people might think of hypnosis. However hypnosis isn't really what it appears to be, it's only a kind of play acting. And nobody would really carry out an instruction to really commit a robbery any more than they'd murder someone if they were told to.
This is straight up misinformation. Derren himself doesn't even believe this, I'm sure, because he would later use hypnosis to convince someone to "murder" Stephen Fry in a special called The Assassin. Used insidiously, hypnosis can absolutely be used to convince people to do things they normally wouldn't, and to suggest otherwise is dangerous. Knowledge of this fact is important, especially for those using hypnosis in kink environments.
But it's inconvenient for Derren, who would rather we think that he is using some kind of magic suggestion powers to add to his mystique. It's a shame, because hypnosis is linked with suggestion and a proper look into it and how it can be used irresponsibly would not have detracted from the show, in my opinion.
Next up, Derren invites his potential participants to a hotel and has a security guard hassle them and a man ask them for payment unexpectedly. Derren says this is to "see how they respond to authority" but it's almost certainly a way to gauge how suggestible as a subject they might be. Suggestibility does vary amongst hypnotic subjects, and though skill as a subject can be trained through practice, Derren would, of course, rather use subjects that are suggestible from the get go.
He also draws attention to the fact that the security guard is wearing green and has the logo of the security company he'll use at the end here, but this smells like some of his audience-manipulation bullshit. He hasn't yet put any of the subjects into trance or planted any hypnotic suggestions, and I don't think animosity towards one man wearing green would cause them to link him to the security van at the end.
Next up: the seminar itself. Some of the things Derren talks about here are real and cool, like the memory linking trick (try this one for yourself!) but once again, he suggests to the audience here that he isn't using hypnosis when, as we'll soon see, he clearly is. He says:
By playing to their natural suggestibility, I encourage them to believe that hypnosis is a real tool which I'm using to cement their new skills.
Of course, this is exactly what he is doing, despite the wry delivery of this line to the audience. In fact, telling a subject they are going to be hypnotised is one of the key things that is done to help them go into trance! So it's not surprising that he would tell them this at all—I just wish he would be honest with his audience here!
He then puts the attendees into trance. It's pretty clear from the footage that this is what is happening:
He installs a trigger to associate rubbing of the leg with a highly motivated state, and transfers this trigger into a post-hypnotic suggestion to bring that out when a Jackson 5 song plays. These are very classic hypnotic techniques. Of course, Derren doesn't talk about this precisely and prefers to reference to it as the vague "power of suggestion".
Finally, and this is key, whilst the subjects are still in trance he tells them to go and steal some sweets from a nearby shop. This is very clearly communicated to them whilst they are in the suggestible state of trance. It's presented as them choosing to do it "because an authority figure told them to", ignoring the powerful effects that trance can have on us. Even at this stage, Derren has already contradicted his opening diatribe about hypnosis being unable to get people to do something they normally wouldn't.
It is actually fascinating watching how elated each of the participants feels after stealing, having associated it with the positive motivational state instilled in them within hypnotic trance. Again, a little honesty here would've gone a long way and not detracted at all, in my opinion.
After an interesting but not directly relevant to hypnosis interlude on the Milgram experiment, Brown then is shown clearly putting the remaining subjects into further trance states, firstly to associate aggression with the motivated state by installing further triggers and linking them to the leg-rubbing motion used at the seminar. He then does more hypnosis on them, getting them to topple each other over by saying "get down on the floor!" To me, now, knowing about hypnosis and having experienced trance, it is obvious what is going on. These post-hypnotic suggestions and triggers he installs are all setup for the grand finale.
During the finale, he talks to the subjects on the phone before they walk down the street with the security van and money. Though he does not show the subjects at this point, I'm almost certain that this is one final trance used to plant the suggestion of stealing as they walk down the street. As they walk, the music trigger plays and 3/4 of them do as their post-hypnotic suggestions have told them.
Finally, Derren takes them into a final room where they go into trance one last time, and have the triggers and aggressive behaviors removed. All in all, this show is even more fascinating now that I know how it was done. But it's also all the more frustrating for the way it is presented. Hypnosis really is the closest thing I have ever seen to magic, yet Derren chooses not to present the show as one that is, fundamentally, about hypnotising people. Instead we're left feeling like we could succumb to "the power of suggestion" just from seeing a badge on a security guard.
For 17 years, I was flummoxed by how he did it, and I think that was the point. Because a few mistruths that downplay how effective hypnotic techniques can be on us really do make us feel like Derren is amazing. When in reality, anyone can learn to hypnotise, or be a subject, and hypnosis can be used to tap into amazing states, not just for nefarious acts of crime, but also for relaxation or pleasure. And that's why this show's underlying dishonesty frustrates me so much.