Great post, thankyou!

Years ago I worked as a Tarot card reader, and in the course of my interests, met psychics, readers, and certified mediums who were gifted, sincere intuitive counsellors, people who spent many years developing their skills. In my experience, people often come to psychics looking for psychological "quick fixes", and even the best cannot give them what they really need, which is the in depth work of ongoing therapy. Also, people generally hear what they want to hear, and even the most sensitive intuitive often cannot penetrate the wall of preconceived ideas or needs a client brings to the table. All of this is why I stopped doing psychic work.

I've also seen some scams; its a world ripe for exploitation, as your article so well points out. The Gypsies have a scam that is so common it must have been passed on among their "fortune tellers" for many generations. They will begin to "see", after creating an atmosphere of sympathetic intimacy, that the person has a "curse" of some kind on them. This can take many forms, from "black magic" to "a negative entity", etc. For a small fee (which gets bigger and bigger) they will help the person remove the curse that is blighting his or her life. Once they have the person hooked, they'll continue until they've milked the sitution dry. It's hard to believe that this still works, but it does. Recently I heard of a reader at a Renaissance Faire in New York pulling this, and notified the management that a "classic" Gypsy reader was probably working there.

I've also seen a lot of people who are well meaning but misguided by their unconscious personal issues, which completely overtake their "advice". A good reader should never, ever, impart fearful or negative information, although it would be alright to suggest being "frugal", "cautious", or "temperate". Anyone who talks about "death", "misfortune", etc. (unless the query concerns something that has happened in the past that the querant is consciously seekng to heal or resolve) is either setting the person up for manipulation, or is projecting their unconscious negativity onto a "client" who may be vulnerable, and thus absorb it.