Derren Discusses The Guilt Trip
If you head over to Channel 4’s website for the Experiments you will be able to see an exclusive interview in which Derren explains where the ideas behind the show came from.
Click the link below to view:
http://www.channel4.com/programmes/derren-brown/articles/derren-brown-on-channel-4
So let me get this right.
It’s a bad thing if someone who believes they have committed a murder actually feels guilty?
These aren’t actually real experiments.
The man was clearly an actor. Nothing fools me Derren but it’s good tv and makes people think 🙂
The whole thing just kind of rips off video game scenarios and uses gamer techniques it was not very original.
In a way it is more about getting the audience to feel bad about watching ….so that ultimately they will watch more..
I could only watch about 2 mins i got bored video games bore me too i must have a low attention span or something…
Ultimately the way of winning a video game is to unplug it….or even better not buy it
I never buy video games they are boring and i dont play them so i guess i dont watch this rubbish.
what amazes me is that no one sees it is literally just copying hundreds of video game scenarios and their techniques of player manipulation especially when i dont even play them
It’s just a rip off
Anyway i couldnt get into it switched off BORING!
are you looking for a apprentice
ha ha i wish m8.your a genius love your work.
I enjoyed the Scottish lady saying “There’s been a murrderr” – it seemed like a nice Taggart reference, if that was deliberate.
The laughing like a schoolboy at the phrase “pearl necklace” was a low point.
totally unethical…..!!! how can anyone know what psychological effects this may have on jodie …
Derren I loved it and my heart sunk for the poor boy but I thik the test was slightly bias as there was memory loss involved.. I think with purely guilt it would be a lot more difficult to convince someone they had done something they hadnt…
I have a challenge for you: Hypnotise my bf into not farting or having less smelly farts xD
Diana: I must object to that. I’m easily hypnotised, but not easily swayed or convinced (stubbornness is one of my bad qualities, I guess). Okay, some may say I’m easily fooled because I often have a problem recognising untruths (due to my autism), but I wouldn’t say I’m easily led. If I disagree with someone, I will say as much and I will argue my point.
Hypnosis is about trust. If I trust someone, I can become totally absorbed in the story they weave, just as I become totally absorbed in books or films (often even temporarily taking on personality characteristics of the main character in a film I’ve just seen). That doesn’t mean I’m not fully aware of what’s happening, though, and it certainly doesn’t mean that I’d just do what some random person tells me to do.
Derren!
Congratulations! Just want to say The Guilt Trip was one of my favourite things you’ve ever done! Many of my friends feel the same. I have to admit though, from about half way through ’til 5 minutes before the end I was feeling very uncomfortable and wasn’t sure if I agreed with what you were doing, which has never happened to me before! But by the end I was just overwhelmed at how brilliant the whole thing was- I was feeling quite euphoric! What an emotional rollercoaster watching it- hilarious to gut-wrenching. Brilliant entertainment and it’s obvious at the end that you always look after your subjects so well and they really are thrilled by the whole thing which is lovely.
Love you!
A friend of mine was really moved by The guilt Trip and blogged about it : http://wp.me/14U0G
Further to the above… Some people I note are being tough on Derren for this show.. but I think they miss the point entirely. He used the show to illustrate a truth that many people have actually lived though and that we should all be aware of. Yay! Derren!
(A friend of mine was really moved by The guilt Trip and blogged about it : http://wp.me/14U0G)
I watch lots of Derren’s shows and often wonder if he has ever considered using his skills of mind manipulation for positive effects on people who suffer with disorders of the mind or with their sensory processing function. I have a son who has Autism and sensory issues and he is highly suggestible because of his condition. Hypnotherapy is something I have considered to help him with his behaviours and stresses and I am sure Derren would have the skills to use as a force for good in this field.
I am not sure if he would ever be allowed to work with vulnerable groups but it would be amazing to see what difference he could bring to people who struggle with their mental health and nervous system disorders like my son.
Derren,
Just wanted you to know that when I watched the Guilt Trip I cried. I was in a horrible relationship for what felt like forever. Watching you work was like watching my relationship in super speed. And for years after it broke down I struggled to come to terms with how I could have turned from the lovely, sensible, confident person I was; into the person that I became. Thank you so much for showing me that I can be manipulated, because of my feelings of responsibility towards other human beings. I have looked and asked for answers for so long. You may just be the person who has unlocked my life for me and for that I am truly grateful!! Also Thank You to Jody for what you went through x ..
The show was uncomfortable to watch, but immensely fascinating. My only issue was at the end.
How did Jody travel from the house to the (fake) police station? The gap in the narrative puzzled me.
It was critical for the producers to have the confession at the station, for the ‘reveal’ at the end to work. But there was no footage shown of Jody making this trip and so we don’t know if it was voluntary. He almost certainly would not have been alone, since the producers would have been under a duty of care to accompany him in a public place (while in such a distressed and vulnerable state).
So it begs the question: did he voluntarily made the trip to the station and confess? or was he hypnotised and told to confess? There’s probably footage which answers this.
Either way, great show DB.
The first 3 shows were absolutely awesome. 10 out of 10. I agree with the typical comment here that the Guilt Trip was the work of a genius who went close to crossing the ethical borderline.
Why were all the cast waiting at the police station, why did he go to bed in his dressing gown, why doesn’t Derren respond to these sceptical blogs?
How could he be sure very step would work? Even if every variable had a 90 per cent chance of working it would only take one to go wrong for it all to start falling apart. Hell of an investment in a show if it all falls apart cos he spots his plates being swopped.
Mike: Can’t answer all your questions, but I’ll try a few.
Why were all the cast waiting at the police station?
-Because they didn’t mention the police station in the village for nothing — as soon as he ran off, they would have know that’s where he was likely to be going. So they probably phoned ahead for the ‘cop’ actors to be ready and waiting and to stall him while they got the cast to the pub next door for the scenic ending.
Why did he go to bed in his dressing gown?
-He didn’t. One of the actors walking in is holding something white and dressing gown-looking. I presume they put it on him because he slept in the nude, and C4 didn’t want nude shots of the guy in the final product.
Why doesn’t Derren respond to these sceptical blogs?
-Because he doesn’t read them, probably.
(cont.)
How could he be sure very step would work? Even if every variable had a 90 per cent chance of working it would only take one to go wrong for it all to start falling apart. Hell of an investment in a show if it all falls apart cos he spots his plates being swopped.
-That’s the one I can’t answer 100% as a viewer, you’d have to ask the crew or Derren and Iain (who are probably busy people and can’t answer every question). My guess is that there were safeguards in place for a lot of the stunts. The plate thing wasn’t that hard, they kept an eye on his face and swapped quickly, he wouldn’t have seen that. And try telling someone they stole your plate when everyone tells you that’s not true — most people cave under the social pressure and stop arguing. And I think failure must’ve been budgeted
Having watched this twice now, I must say that guilt only seemed to be part of it. Distrust of his own memory due to all that manipulation and waking up outside etc, seemed to me to be at least as important to achieve the end result. So you might as well have called it “The Guilt and Misinformation Trip” which would have been more accurate.
I also was concerned that this all went much too far, so much so that I suspected that the entire show was a setup – having heard of the phrase “duty of care”, I can’t imagine that there’s any way to predict someone’s reaction to this level of stress, and even if seeming to lose contact with your victim was only done for dramatic effect, it was still pretty cruel. If you HAD lost contact with him, it would have bordered on criminal. contd…
The most unbelievable part I found was at the end, where he must have walked at least half a mile, alone, to the fake police station, where the cast were gathered. (How convenient he didn’t confess until then!) I can’t imagine what mental state he would have been in for that walk, though I can guess how I would have felt, so I do hope you had a backup plan in case he’d done something crazy! That’s if he wasn’t an actor too…
In the main I love your shows though and agree with your rationalist outlook, I just hope you don’t REALLY hurt someone any time soon!
Dave: ‘At least half a mile’? That’s a ten minute walk. For me, that is (female, not very tall, nor in very good physical shape). The train station near my house is more than half a mile away according to Google Maps, and I can walk there in ten minutes.
Who would he confess to along the way? You don’t generally walk up to random people in the street to confess a murder, and had he confessed at the house, I’m sure they’d have had the fake police guys pick him up.
If you think he’d have been suicidal, well, there’s not a whole lot of ways to kill oneself along a country road with little to no traffic (I know I’m assuming here, but it looked like a quiet town) and no train tracks. Unless he had a knife with him, but why would you bring a knife to a seminar? I don’t think he was in danger.
Derren, are you aware of the term ‘gaslighting’?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaslighting
It’s a technique used by psychopaths and you are using it several times in this episode. I’m trying to raise awareness for psychopathy for years now because I believe it’s at the core of the problems we face at the moment. I love your work but am a bit confused at this point. The activist part of me says you’ve crossed a line here. What are your thought? Thanks.
Berber Anna: Yes, I expect with the potential risks of making someone unstable enough to turn themselves in for a murder they can’t remember doing, there were a lot of safeguards in place, for legal reasons. But the program was conveniently sketchy about his whereabouts and who was monitoring him just after he left the building, just to ramp up the dramatic tension I expect. And it worked – I felt pretty worried about him at that point!
Arjen: totally agree, “Gaslighting is a form of psychological abuse in which false information is presented with the intent of making a victim doubt his or her own memory and perception”. Sums up what was done to him quite nicely really – and why not just I believe that a line was crossed.
People are so naive.. there’s so much money in this type of shows as there is in all the rest of the fake shows like Ghost Hunters etc.
There is no such thing as hypnosis, any real sciencetist will tell you that.
If you really could put people to sleep in 1 second as he does in the very first show just method would MIGHT just be learned by a criminal here and there instead of rubbing people with a knife on the street.
Anyone here who’s ever been participating in a hypnosis show knows that it is fake and just something you play along with not to spoil the show.