What is Magical Thinking? Do you practice it? Does someone you know practice it?

Answer 1

What I know to be Magical Thinking is the kind of thinking usually practiced by children.

For example: Thinking this: If I make this basket right now, I will one day go to the Olympics. or If I can jump this far, I'll get my every wish.

Magical Thinking that extends itself into adulthood or even adolescence can sometimes be symptomatic of people with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder.

For example: If I don't pick up this piece of trash, someone will trip over it and get hurt. If I step on cracks, I will indeed break my mother's back. If I don't check the door three times minimum, I am liable to have the house robbed.

For others Magical Thinking is something we do in the early stages of grief.

For example: My father who died of liver cancer when I was eleven, I would imagine that he really wasn't dead for some months after he died, that one day he'd walk in, home from work, change clothes and be down for dinner. A friend of mine whose father also died, told me she thought, however, secretively, that she might be driving around town one day, and maybe see her dad in another car. Magically thinking that he wasn't really dead, he was just out for a while.

To me, this is magical thinking.

Answer 2

Typically, people use magic to attempt to explain things that science has not yet explained, or to attempt to control things that science cannot. The classic example is of the collapsing roof, described in E. E. Evans-Pritchard's Witchcraft, Magic, and Oracles Among the Azande, in which the Azande claimed that a roof fell on a particular person because of a magical spell cast by another person. The Azande did understand a scientific explanation for the collapsing room (that termites had eaten through the supporting posts), but pointed out that this scientific explanation could not explain why the roof happened to collapse at precisely the same moment that the particular man was resting beneath it. Thus, from the point of view of the practitioners, magic explains what scientists would call "coincidences" or "contingency". From the point of view of outside observers, magic is a way of making coincidences meaningful in social terms. Carl Jung coined the word synchronicity for experiences of this type.

Answer 3

Magical thinking is operating with clarity that you are creating all of your experiences. That circumstances can be bent in subtle forms with alittle pressure from you. That practicing this over time developes an even greater ability, and what you change starts to become what to others may seem unlikely. But you've adjusted to a way different relationship with this world.

IT also takes subtle uses of your own power (personality, feeling, sight, taste, hearing). My teacher would say that untimately, you would just be magical with very little thought.

So, yes; I practice this and am taught this by someone.

Answer 4

Magical thinking is rather natural for children because they have not yet developed the ability to always tell what is real from fantasy. With adults, It is also called superstitious behavior. For example, there was an episode on the TV show, Frasier, where a basketball player became convinced that to make points in the game, he needed to rub Niles' head before a game

Answer 5

I practiced magical thinking when I was a teenager and almost went to jail for it when I was caught with dime baggie on me.

Answer 6

Magical Thinking is a term invented by the psychiatric community to label people with, who are not constrained by what is considered 'normal' behavior...they have a bunch of other pet terms to attempt to make all humans into one big seamless horde under their control...

Their latest is Asperger's syndrome, a label to put on people who are individualists...

Answer 7

Magical thinking is going around thinking some wizard in the sky is going to whap you in the head with a stick if you do something "wrong". Or going around thinking the world owes you something "because you deserve it".

Answer 8

It is called power of the mind, any thing that you think or believe for sure it will happen to you.

Do you know the Shinn florence scovel, I advice you to read her books.

Answer 9

Um......it's thinking about magic? Or maybe better yet......imagination! If that's so, then i guess we all practice it.

Answer 10

non-scientific causal reasoning

For example, a man who has won a bowling competition in a given shirt may then believe this shirt is lucky. He will continue to wear the shirt to bowling competitions, and though he continues to win some and lose some, he will chalk up every win to his lucky shirt.