From the memoirs of Mark Edward, a prominent former psychic:
I’m quite confident that I would know by now if I had a spirit guide or my Aunt Ethel’s watchful ghost alongside me. I have looked and searched, then looked again. I’ve traveled all over the planet and humbled myself in front of everything from Celtic priestesses to UFO abductees and their recruiters. This process has been repeated over and over, only to circle back endlessly into the cul-de-sac of my own personal nightmare alley. There’s nothing there in the dark, though I have frequently found myself wanting to believe there are supernatural elements to converse with and take refuge in. Their existence would have made life so much easier to understand and exploit. Still, I have a head start at getting your goat. And I will. It’s Darwin’s survival of the fittest, and a sideshow tent is never far from a psychiatrist’s couch; there’s just more sawdust on the floor.
That line about the psychiatrist’s couch is the clincher.
Bravo!
That’s a reference to the 1946 novel Nightmare Alley, which details the rise and fall of a psychic fraudster. Highly recommended.