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Marc Coleman is a business consultant, former broadcaster and journalist. He is currently working on a book on the persistence of western democracy.
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‘Magical thinking’ is a great phrase that I learnt years ago, it’s a concept that’s useful to understand someone’s thought processes, maybe even your own. If you know what it is, skip forward about two minutes; if you don’t, it’s important to understand that it’s not a positive thing, in fact it’s very negative.
The concept of magical thinking is often used by therapists, psychologists and so on, to classify a particular thought process, and to help their patients to get over it. You see it at a comical level sometimes in kids, don’t step on the cracks in the pavements or the monster will get you. That’s basically the core of it, believing that one thing can affect another thing where two seconds of rational thought by an adult will tell you that it can’t.
People with mental health problems frequently exhibit magical thinking. A very famous example would be John Hinckley, Jr, the guy who shot Ronald Reagan in 1981, did it because he thought it would impress the actress Jodie Foster and make her fall in love with him.
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