Newsweek
When business people need a crystal ball, they turn to consultant Laura Day, the ‘intuitionist.’
It’s impossible to objectively judge psychic powers. Are psychics just good listeners who pick up enough clues from their clients to provide seemingly insightful answers? Are they making lucky guesses? “It’s kind of a dirty secret,” Day says of business people who use psychics like herself. She declines to identify most of her clients, and almost all who spoke to NEWSWEEK also requested anonymity out of concern for their reputations.
Day is one of a small but expanding cadre of corporate psychic consultants—the professionalized face of an occupation better known for hokey headscarves and crystal balls. Rebranded as “intuitionists” or “mentalists”—terms more palatable to mainstream America—psychic advisers in recent years have been crossing over into the world of legitimate business, where they are used by decision makers in law, finance and entertainment looking for an edge in a down economy. “I specialize in nonbelievers,” says Day, referring to her roster of “red-meat-eating, Barneys-shopping, Type A personalities.”
For a flat rate of $10,000 a month, Day’s insight is available for rent. She has about five monthly clients at a time, offering them unlimited 24-hour access. She works from her airy Tribeca apartment, fielding calls while juggling domestic life as the mother of a 16-year-old boy, whose friends are often over in packs. The commotion is helpful, she says, allowing her to keep her “rational mind busy” while she picks up on things from “left field.” (Though she admits her teenager can be psychically distracting as well: “I don’t want to see what he did with that girl until 2 a.m.,” she says. “But I can.”) In a typical call early last year, a prominent Wall Street money manager asked whether he should pull out of a risky, multimillion-dollar energy deal or let his money ride. “My gut,” Day recalls saying, “is that you’re not going to get your return.” The money manager listened and yanked his investment, she says, just before the deal nose-dived. More
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June 29th, 2008 at 5:03 am
For more than 30 years I have studied psychics who suddenly appear on the scene following a media story, often one with little real investigation or follow-through. Reports where a writer doesn’t ask for proof and builds only the claims of what someone has said help spread unfounded or exaggerated charades. For an insight into how the media created perhaps the world’s most publicized “credible” psychic — one that lectured at the FBI — but entirely missed the incredibly fantasized exaggerations, see the commercial-free web site http://www.amindformurder.com Thank you.
June 29th, 2008 at 9:47 am
Noreen Renier (and others like her) focus on crime. The woman featured in this article is a corporate psychic consultant–these people rarely seek mainstream media coverage for fear of losing, not gaining clients.
October 1st, 2008 at 12:43 am
The most damaging power behind psychics and their claims is time. For many business psychics (who like to dress themselves up as either Wall Street mentalists or intuitionists, but never soothsayers) is that their claims — always vague, with anonymous sources that must remain anonymous — are now found lacking. No prior published and accredited claims accurately predicted the specific scenarios of Lehman Brothers, AIG, Washington Mutual, the buy-out of Merrill-Lynch, or Wachovia. Rather, investments supported by psychic intuitions — guesses — from early 2008 have collapsed and major investors have lost millions. But even now these $10,000 a month psychics show no proof of their claims. Amazingly none have offered to show any newspaper confirmed documented proofs that they ever actually made financial forecasts beforehand which resulted in anything but “wipe-out” investor losses in September. Now in early October 2008 after 10 days of economic turmoil there were absolutely zero prior claims specific to any of the major events of the past 10 days. None. See http://www.amindformurder.com/BattleContinues.htm