CBS "The Mentalist" vs a real-life mentalist
Are mentalists real? Do they really have those abilities? Can they solve crimes? And how accurate is Simon Baker’s portrayal?
The answer is both yes and no, really.
Firstly, mentalists are real. If they are not, then I am not entirely sure who or what I am, and if I am not real then is anything real? Let us proceed on the assumption that I exist.
Start with the dictionary, which is also both right and wrong
Dictionary definitions of "mentalist" tend to offer three things: a person who advocates mentalism; a person who holds that the mind and its functions are a legitimate area of psychological research; and a mind reader, psychic or fortune-teller.
The first two are reasonable. The third one lumps together a legitimate performance discipline and a set of claims I want nothing to do with. A mentalist performs. A fortune-teller asserts. Those are not the same job and, in my view, not the same ethics.
What the show gets right
More than you might expect.
Patrick Jane's core method is observation, memory and confidence, and that is genuinely the foundation. The cold reading is well done. The trick of appearing to know something because you noticed something is exactly the business I am in. And the show's insistence that Jane is a sceptic who used to run a fraudulent psychic act is not only accurate to how a lot of real mentalists think, it is unusually principled for prime-time television.
The habit of reading a room the moment he walks into it is also fair. Not to that standard, but the instinct is right.
What it invents
Reliability, mostly.
Jane observes a detail and is correct. Every time. Within the hour. Real reading of people is probabilistic, and a working mentalist is wrong regularly. The difference is that a performance is built so that being wrong is survivable, and often useful. Television has no time for that, because a show in which the lead is right about seventy per cent of the time is a very different programme.
The other invention is scale. Deducing that someone is a killer from a shirt cuff is not deduction, it is scriptwriting. Sherlock Holmes has the same problem.
So can a mentalist solve a crime?
Help, occasionally. Solve, no.
What someone with this training can genuinely do is notice inconsistencies, spot when a story is being recited rather than recalled, and ask better questions. That is a contribution, and investigators use versions of it constantly. But it is a long way from walking into a room and identifying a murderer.
If you would like the honest version of what the skill can do, I have written about what actually works in reading deception, including why most of the famous advice is wrong.
Should you watch it?
Yes. It is a good show, and Baker plays the register well: charming, insufferable, and quietly grieving underneath. Just do not take it as a documentary, and please do not ask me to find anything at a crime scene.
Want to see the real version?
Tell Phoenix what you're planning and you'll get a straight recommendation on the best format for your audience — usually within one business day.