“I once met a woman with a serious phobia of butterflies, even dead ones pinned under glass; it would have been child’s play to mindfuck her by hinting at the presence of butterflies under the bed. The mindfucker is a student of human weakness and vulnerability, using these traits of create false beliefs and emotional chaos. Perhaps this is part of the reason the mindfucker seems a more unsavoury character than the bullshitter (for whom we reserve a modicum of pity). The mindfuck (in the negative sense) is a dark and sinister thing, going far beyond the merely cognitive wrongdoing of the kind perpetrated by lies and bullshit.“

—Colin McGinn, Mindfucking, 2008.