Parsing the Laws of Magic (specifically the fourth)

[Tsunami]

Third Law: Consent gets you clear of the Lawbreaker.
Fourth Law: Consent does not get you clear. The Act of enthralling alone is twisting the targeted mind and your own.

But thats just me.

[ballplayer72]

It sounds to me like this practitioner is trying to, in mechanical terms, heal mental consequences with psychomancy in the manner that biomancy may heal physical consequences.  She could use Reiki, replace physical with mental, and call it a day.

 The problem is that human science understands biology and physical trauma far, far, far more thoroughly than it understands psychology and mental trauma.  When someone has a fractured bone, a trained biologist will know exactly what needs to happen in order for that wound to be healed... and thus a trained biomancer could help speed the body along on its natural healing process.  With mental trauma, however, it is nigh impossible to have that level of certainty.  A psychomancer attempting to help a mind's natural recovery would have to tread very lightly to avoid accidentally

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bleeping

something up and making things worse.  The human mind is used to being Alone in the dark space behind its eyes and it may not react well to having that solitude disrupted, regardless of what that person may have said.

 Regarding Lawbreaker, I don't have PG with me to confirm this either way, but are we certain that

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Molly entered their minds without their consent

?  Part of me wants to say that informed consent will allow a PC to avoid acquiring Lawbreaker, since magic respects that sort of thing in regards to other thresholds, but it wouldn't necessarily let them avoid being tried as a warlock by the White Council anyway.

Molly mindraped both of them.  Nelson first to "test it" and you can see how well that worked out.  Rosie got less of a problem but was still pretty crazy.

[DFJunkie]

Oops, I did mean the third law, my bad.  The fourth one is enthralling, which, yes, is entirely bad.

The mechanical effects of her psychomancy would be the mental equivalent of the Reikki spell, no question.  Additionally, I'd say that sustained treatment would provide justification for changing a psychological aspect around a milestone.  The question was more along the lines of "does this PC get an additional Lawbreaker stunt every third appointment?" and the answer seems to be "no."

The unfortunate part of being that particular player is that she'll only rarely get to use her abilities in actual conflicts, though I look forward to her "kid at Christmas" expression when she runs into a Black Court vamp who thinks he's good at mind magic.

One nagging question I have though: if it's okay to enter another's mind with their consent, you'd think that Wizards would be better prepared to resist mental assaults.  After all, you can consent to the potential consequences (a peek inside) of a mental sparring match.  Or maybe the WC just doesn't encourage that sort of thing because they are professionally hidebound.

[Saedar]

I would think that the reason they aren't more prepared for mental assaults and why they don't just let people walk around inside their heads is that they probably don't want to let someone know that much about them or pose too much temptation.

[ryanroyce]

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Molly mindraped both of them.  Nelson first to "test it" and you can see how well that worked out.  Rosie got less of a problem but was still pretty crazy

.

Yeah, but did she ask them for permission first?  Unless she did it to them both while they were sleeping (I can't reference the book to know for sure), she probably would have convinced them to go along with her scheme, even though they couldn't have comprehended it.  If so, then consent didn't help.

[KOFFEYKID]

To those of you pointing out our extreme lack of understanding of the workings in the human mind, and not even knowing whether or not something is wrong. I disagree.

If you look at something thats broken, or damage, you can usually tell that it is damaged, even if you dont know how exactly it is damaged, or how exactly to fix it.

In the same way Im guessing that a psychomancer could delve into your mind, and get a feel for the areas of trauma, stress, etcetera.

[Deadmanwalking]

Yeah, but did she ask them for permission first?  Unless she did it to them both while they were sleeping (I can't reference the book to know for sure), she probably would have convinced them to go along with her scheme, even though they couldn't have comprehended it.  If so, then consent didn't help.

Clearly she did not. Neither even knew something had been done.

[DFJunkie]

Yeah.  Nelson wasn't so much "clued in" but he did hang out with people who thought they were practicing magic (see Molly's discussion with Harry towards the end of PG), if she'd told him what she was doing, he'd probably have believed.

[ballplayer72]

Yeah, but did she ask them for permission first?  Unless she did it to them both while they were sleeping (I can't reference the book to know for sure), she probably would have convinced them to go along with her scheme, even though they couldn't have comprehended it.  If so, then consent didn't help.

well, seeing as how they didn't realize why they were suddenly paranoid schizophrenics whenever they wanted a hit (which for someone going through the DT's of opiate addiction is about every 3 seconds.) and say "hey molly whatever you did has me freaking the heck out all the time.  you gotta turn it off" and instead were entirely clueless as to their predicament, I'd say she didn't ask first.     Even if she did, she twisted and made them feel fear.   Thats black magic as surely as harry roasting all those passed out kids and hobos at the RC party in GP.   

[ryanroyce]

To those of you pointing out our extreme lack of understanding of the workings in the human mind, and not even knowing whether or not something is wrong. I disagree.

If you look at something thats broken, or damage, you can usually tell that it is damaged, even if you dont know how exactly it is damaged, or how exactly to fix it.

In the same way Im guessing that a psychomancer could delve into your mind, and get a feel for the areas of trauma, stress, etcetera.

 Simply put, it isn't good enough to merely know that something is broken or wrong or damaged.  If my car breaks down and lets out the magic smoke, I know that something is wrong.  Duh.  It doesn't mean I necessarily have the tools or the mechanical knowledge to fix it.  When it comes to biomancy or psychomancy, magic can stand in for the tools, but it can't stand in for the knowledge.  With biology, science has a very, very precise understanding of exactly how things work.  Unfortunately, this isn't true when it comes to science's understanding of the mind (not just the brain), especially in Dresden-verse where willful ignorance of anything supernatural can cloud judgement.  I'm not saying that fixing a mind with psychomancy can't be done, I'm just saying that the limits of human science make it more difficult than fixing a body with biomancy.  To express this idea mechanically, I'd make the mental version of Reiki require an extra shift of complexity. 

 Also, just to be clear, a psychomancer could _diagnose_ mental trauma without much difficulty, especially if they had the Counselor stunt for Empathy or if it was inflicted by black magic.  It's just that their diagnosis would be expressed within the scope of mortal understanding.

 On a related note, I just reread Turn Coat and it seems very clear that consent makes the difference when it comes to psychomancy.  After the treachery is exposed, several mentions are made of examining the extent of the psychic damage inflicted on the Wardens and other Council members.

[KOFFEYKID]

The question with the mental problems isn't you needing to know how to fix it. You just need to know where the damage is. You aren't supposed to try to fix it, that would give you a lawbreaker.