Alchemy: The Surprising Power of Ideas That Don't Make Sense

by Rory Sutherland

The placebo effect, like many other forms of alchemy, is an attempt to influence the mind or body’s automatic processes. Our unconscious, specifically our ‘adaptive unconscious’ as psychologist Timothy Wilson calls it in Strangers to Ourselves (2002), does not notice or process information in the same way we do consciously, and does not speak the same language that our consciousness does, but it holds the reins when it comes to much of our behaviour. This means that we often cannot alter subconscious processes through a direct logical act of will – we instead have to tinker with those things we can control to influence those things we can’t or manipulate our environment to create conditions conducive to an emotional state which we cannot will into being.