When someone claims to have a psychic ability, there is the extraordinary possibility that they're telling the truth about a genuine ability, but the more mundane possibilities are obviously that they are consciously lying about it for money and attention or that they have managed to convince themselves that they have an ability they don't in fact possess.
All of us are capable of deceiving ourselves from time to time about one thing or another, and even more so if we see this as a problem that only other people are susceptible to. Many self-professed fortune tellers and mediums are conceivably in this category, but this is unlikely to be true of the spoon bending performances of Uri Geller because of the preparation and ingenuity that would be required to fake them. It just isn't the sort of thing a sane person could innocently convince themselves they could do if they can't. In cases like this, we could exclude self-deception as an explanation leaving genuine paranormal ability or deliberate, premeditated deception as the only options. If we assume for the sake of argument that there is no such thing as paranormal ability, some interesting questions arise about the psychology of people like Geller.
The possibility that he has been maintaining such an exhausting lie for decades to all but perhaps his closest confidants is appalling to contemplate. I can't imagine how any amount of wealth or fame could be worth erecting such an enormous obstacle to intimate human relationships. How could you sincerely call anyone a friend if you had to maintain a pretense of being able to use your powers to help and guide them? If his former manager is to be believed, Geller's wife has been in on the deception from the beginning. If so, he isn't completely alone in the world, but on the other hand, what a terrible burden to place on his wife. And they have children.
Geller has taken money for his 'psychic' services including from oil and gold prospecting companies, so there might be some serious legal consequences for him if he admitted to fraud. It could be that he feels trapped by this with no option but to continue the lie. He has gently backed away from using the term 'psychic' to describe himself in recent years, which could be a sign that he's growing tired of the deception, but I doubt this could be the whole story. If he privately admits to himself that he has no psychic abilities, why would he bother spending £30K on an inhospitable Scottish island a few years ago? He wouldn't have had to buy this island to claim, as he has, that there is hidden Egyptian treasure there or to point out that the islands of which it is a part are arranged in a line. For obvious reasons, he compares this linear arrangement to that of the pyramids at Giza and the stars in Orion's belt rather than things like garden furniture. He can't build on the island because it's in a conservation area and it's very hard to get onto, so what could be the point of this kind of exercise unless he sincerely believes he has sensed something mystical about it? There's a chance that he intends to sell it for a profit after he has generated a certain amount of mystique around it, but who knows?
It's hard to put yourself in the shoes of people who have a radically different style of thinking from oneself, so for all I know, Geller may have the sort of mind that can wall off his deceptive behavior from his sense of identity and self-worth to the point that he can do the mental gymnastics required to deliberately hide a magnet in his hand to make it look like he is affecting a compass needle with his mind, while simultaneously believing that he really does have psychic powers. I don't know.
There is also another intriguing possibility, and that is that he thinks that if he just focuses hard enough, whatever modest powers he believes he possesses will one day grow strong enough to perform these feats without 'help', at which point his life won't be a lie any more. That would be another way out of his prison. Perhaps he's just trying to act the part until then. Indeed, this would be a fairly straightforward application of the 'law of attraction' philosophy that he advocates. For the uninitiated, this is the mystical idea that 'like attracts like' so if you think negative thoughts, negative things will happen to you, and if you think positive thoughts, positive things will happen to you. For example, if you think of yourself as a fraud trapped in a prison of your own lies, then you will end up exposed and humiliated, but if you think there is no limit to what you can achieve, then you will reach your full psychic potential and won't have to lie about it any more.
The irony is that Uri Geller really does have an enormous untapped power to influence the world which could earn him a great deal of respect. I'm talking about the impact of a full and sincere confession. At first, many of the people who trusted him would undoubtedly feel hurt and humiliated by it, and he'd have to beg for their forgiveness, but in the long run, I think Geller could use his experience to help inoculate people against the tricks applied by the more callous side of his trade. While some self-professed psychics are doing nothing more than filling newspaper columns with relatively harmless entertainment, others are taking money from the desperate and vulnerable, the bereaved and the ill, using false promises of contact with deceased loved ones and snake-oil cures. This is cruel, and Geller could help smoke them out. And to be honest, it would be absolutely fascinating to know how Geller did it all and what he was thinking while he did it.
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