Psychics and the severely brain damaged.

[Big Les]

I never fail to be amazed at the depths to which the psychics will stoop. I've just seen Colin Fry tell the family of a severely brain-injured man that "his mind is alive spirit-side" and that he could hear and understand everything said to or around him. This is because of a previous audience-based cold reading that was going awry for Fry, because the woman was reacting as though she had lost someone, but when he did his check of "and he's spirit-side?", she was very uncertain. He quickly adapted and stated that he was "this side of life" - guessing that there was a coma or similar involved. He then made the whole family the subject of a revisit.

The poor guy was struck by lightning some years previously and was clearly in either a persistent vegetative state or a minimally responsive one - he was frozen physically in one position, with a look of absolute terror on his face (probably not something he's actually feeling mind you).

Now there's a difference here between talking to the dead ostensibly to "help" the surviving loved ones, and perhaps making it easier for a family to live with a situation where their relative is still notionally alive, in other words where the grieving process is already impeded. You could argue that a psychic might be able to help them past this difficult state. The problem of course, just as with the dead, is that they will never be able to truly move on and accept that he's effectively gone. Also as with the usual situation, trained counselling would be vastly preferable.

Maybe it's me as an observer finding this sort of thing far worse than psychics "talking to the dead". Something of the person really could still be there, and instead of the family adapting to the state they are in and eventually coming to terms with it, they will now forever kid themselves that nothing has actually changed, and it's like the guy is just on vacation or something.

Ugh, sorry, I'm rambling. This one really got me angry.

 

[chillzero]

I find Colin Fry to be one of the most despicable people on earth. A man originally trained in grief therapy, he has mistreated those who are vulnerable. He lies to his fans to detract from the fact he was caught out in a fraudulent medium act.

There are few lows he can stoop to that surprise me any more.

 

[Big Les]

I hadn't realised he was trained - he presumably thinks he's doing people a favour. A sort of bereavement vigilante, if you will.

 

[ExMinister]

Never heard of this guy until I saw this post. I don't get it. He;s obviously a total fraud. So with the trumpet story available to anyone who simply does a search on his name on the internet, why would this guy still have a show? For that matter, why does Sylvia Browne still have so many fans? It took me 20 years to figure out the truth about Sylvia Browne because there WAS no internet and everything I found out, I had to find out the hard way. If i could have typed in Sylvia's name and found a site like Robert's, I never would have gone back.

This guy sounds despicable, too, and he has two shows. It's almost as bad as Sylvia, isn't it?

 

[fuelair]

Because too many people can't/won't accept reality - because reality often sucks.

 

[AgeGap]

Because too many people can't/won't accept reality - because reality often sucks.

And sucks hard for a lot of people. If you look at a lot of the poor people who go to psychics, they are at their lowest ebb. Vultures pick on easy prey. I hope that their is never a time that I would feel the need to seek the help of one of these ********. There is another thread on the boards that mentions this link. It is a catalogue of desperate people taking desperate measures and getting bitter, bitter disappointment.

 

[Alice Shortcake]

What a loathesome little man Colin Fry is. And any medium who claims to communicate with people suffering from massive brain damage or severe mental handicap is playing a very risky game - if an individual's mental functions, personality and memory have been destroyed or never existed, what exactly is LEFT to survive bodily death? What happens to anancephalic babies born without a brain or Alzheimers victims who don't even know who they are? Questions like these always spring to my mind whenever I hear mediums waffling on about the great family reunion in the sky - it's pure wish fulfilment.

 

[sophia8]

And sucks hard for a lot of people. If you look at a lot of the poor people who go to psychics, they are at their lowest ebb. Vultures pick on easy prey. I hope that their is never a time that I would feel the need to seek the help of one of these ********. There is another thread on the boards that mentions this link. It is a catalogue of desperate people taking desperate measures and getting bitter, bitter disappointment.

And I've mentioned this blog post and its comments before - examples of the desperate people that monsters like SB deliberately exploit.

 

[Kilik]

Ya I saw there's these people that put weird things in eggs, then crack them open for people and tell them it's an "omen" of something bad and to give them money to stop it from coming true hahaha

 

[steve s]

I too was unfamiliar with Fry. I just stopped by his website. Here's his Positive Thought for the Day.

"Dreams can only come true if you have confidence in yourself"

We really need a barfing smilie.

Steve S.

 

[Big Les]

I wish I was still unfamiliar with Trumpet Boy. Give him some credit - he's a better cold reader than John Edward. In fact the latter's success must really chap his bottom.