Enter Their Spirit
Most people are locked in their own worlds, making them stubborn and hard to persuade. The way to lure them out of their shell and set up your seduction is to enter their spirit. Play by their rules, enjoy what they enjoy, adapt yourself to their moods. In doing so you will stroke their deep-rooted narcissism and lower their defenses.
Hypnotized by the mirror image you present, they will open up, becoming vulnerable to your subtle influence. Soon you can shift the dynamic: once you have entered their spirit you can make them
enter yours, at a point when it is too late to turn back. Indulge your targets’ every mood and whim, giving them nothing to react against or resist.
You’re anxious to keep your mistress? \ Convince her she’s knocked you all of a heap \ With her stunning looks. If it’s purple she‘s wearing, praise purple; \ When she’s in a silk dress, say silk \ Suits her best of all… Admire \ Her singing voice, her
gestures as she dances, \ Cry “Encore!” when she stops. You can even praise \ Her performance in bed, her talent for love-making—\ Spell out what turned you on. \ Though she may show fiercer in action than any Medusa, \ Her lover will always
describe her as kind \ And gentle. But take care not to give yourself away while \ Making such tongue- in- cheek compliments, don’t allow \ Your
expression to ruin the message. Art’s most effective
\ When concealed. Detection discredits you for good.
—OVID. THE ART OF LOVE, TRANSLATED BY PETER GREEN
The little boy (or girl) seeks to fascinate his or her parents. In Oriental literature, imitation is reckoned to be one of the ways of attracting. The Sanskrit texts, for example, give an important part to the trick of the woman copying the dress,
expressions, and speech of her beloved. This kind of mimetic drama is urged on the woman who, “being unable to unite with her beloved, imitates him to distract his thoughts. ” • The child too, using the devices of imitating attitudes, dress, and so on, seeks to fascinate, with a magical intention, the father or mother and thus to “distract its thoughts. ” Identification means that one is abandoning and not abandoning amorous desires.
It is a lure which the child uses to capture his
parents and which, it must be admitted, they fall for. The same is true for the masses, who imitate
their leader, bear his name and repeat his gestures.
They bow to him, but at the same time they are unconsciously baiting a trap to hold him. Great
ceremonies and demonstrations are just as much
occasions when the multitudes charm the leader as vice versa.
—SERGE MOSCOVICI, THE AGE OF THE CROWD, TRANSLATED BY J. C. WHITEHOUSE
The Indulgent Strategy
In October of 1961, the American journalist Cindy Adams was granted an exclusive interview with President Sukarno of Indonesia. It was a
remarkable coup, for Adams was a little-known journalist at the time, while Sukarno was a world figure in the midst of a crisis. A leader of the fight for Indonesia’s independence, he had been the country’s president since 1949, when the Dutch finally gave up the colony. By the early 1960s, his daring foreign policy had made him hated in the United States, some calling him
the Hitler of Asia.
Adams decided that in the interests of a lively interview, she would not be cowed or overawed by Sukarno, and she began the conversation by joking with him. To her pleasant surprise, her ice-breaking tactic seemed to work: Sukarno warmed up to her. He let the interview run well over an hour, and when it was over he loaded her with gifts. Her success was
remarkable enough, but even more so were the friendly letters she began to receive from Sukarno after she and her husband had returned to New York. A few years later, he proposed that she collaborate with him on his autobiography.
Adams, who was used to doing puff pieces on third-rate celebrities, was confused. She knew Sukarno had a reputation as a devilish Don Juan—le grand séducteur, the French called him. He had had four wives and
hundreds of conquests. He was handsome, and obviously he was attracted to her, but why choose her for this prestigious task? Perhaps his libido was too powerful for him to care about such things. Nevertheless, it was an offer she could not refuse.
In January of 1964, Adams returned to Indonesia. Her strategy, she had decided, would stay the same: she would be the brassy, straight-talking lady who had seemed to charm Sukarno three years earlier. During her first
interview with him for the book, she complained in rather strong terms about the rooms she had been given as lodgings. As if he were her secretary, she dictated a letter to him, which he was to sign, detailing the special treatment she was to be given by one and all. To her amazement, he dutifully copied out the letter, and signed it.
Next on Adams’s schedule was a tour of Indonesia to interview people who had known Sukarno in his youth. So she complained to him about the plane she had to fly on, which she said was unsafe. “I tell you what, honey,” she told him, “I think you should give me my own plane.” “Okay,” he
answered, apparently somewhat abashed. One, however, was not enough, she went on; she required several planes, and a helicopter, and her own
personal pilot, a good one. He agreed to everything. The leader of Indonesia seemed to be not just intimidated by Adams but totally under her spell. He praised her intelligence and wit. At one point he confided, “Do you know why I’m doing this biography? . . . Only because of you, that’s why.” He paid attention to her clothes, complimenting her outfits, noticing any
change in them. He was more like a fawning suitor than the “Hitler of Asia.”
My sixth brother, he who had both his lips cut off, Prince of the Faithful, is called Shakashik. • In his youth he was very poor. One day, as he was begging in the streets of Baghdad, he passed by a splendid mansion, at the gates of which stood an
impressive array of attendants. Upon inquiry my
brother was informed that the house belonged to a member of the wealthy and powerful Barmecide
family. Shakashik approached the door- keepers and solicited alms. • “Go in,” they said, “and our master will give you all that you desire. ” . • My
brother entered the lofty vestibule and proceeded to a spacious, marble-paved hall, hung with
tapestry and overlooking a beautiful garden. He stood bewildered for a moment, not knowing where to turn his steps, and then advanced to the far end of the hall. There, among the cushions, reclined a handsome old man with a long beard, whom my
brother recognized at once as the master of the house. • “What can I do for you, my friend?” asked the old man, as he rose to welcome my
brother. • When Shakashik replied that he was a
hungry beggar, the old man expressed the deepest compassion and rent his fine robes, crying: “Is it possible that there should be a man as hungry as
yourself in a city where I am living? It is, indeed, a disgrace that I cannot endure!” Then he comforted my brother, adding: “I insist that you stay with me and partake of my dinner.” • With this the master of the house clapped his hands and called out to
one of the slaves: “Bring in the basin and ewer. ” Then he said to my brother: “Come forward, my friend, and wash your hands.”. • Shakashik rose to do so, but saw neither ewer nor basin. He was
bewildered to see his host make gestures as though he were pouring water on his hands from an
invisible vessel and then drying them with an
invisible towel. When he finished, the host called out to his attendants: “Bring in the table!” . •
Numerous servants hurried in and out of the hall, as though they were preparing for a meal. My
brother could still see nothing. Yet his host invited him to sit at the imaginary table, saying, “Honor me by eating of this meat.” • The old man moved his hands about as though he were touching
invisible dishes, and also moved his jaws and lips as though he were chewing. Then said he to Shakashik: “Eat your fill, my friend, for you must be famished. ” • My brother began to move his jaws, to chew and swallow, as though he were eating, while the old man still coaxed him, saying: “Eat, my friend, and note the excellence of this
bread and its whiteness.” •“This man,” thought Shakashik, “must be fond of practical jokes.” So he said, “It is, sir, the whitest bread I have ever seen, and I have never tasted the like in all my
life.” • “This bread,” said the host, “was baked by a slave girl whom I bought for five hundred dinars.” Then he called out to one of his slaves: “Bring in the meat pudding, and let there be plenty of fat in it!” • . . . Thereupon the host moved his
fingers as though to pick up a morsel from an
imaginary dish, and popped the invisible delicacy into my brother’s mouth. • The old man continued to enlarge upon the excellences of the various dishes, while my brother became so ravenously
hungry that he would have willingly died for a crust of barley bread. • “Have you ever tasted anything more delicious,” went on the old man, “than the spices in these dishes?” • “Never, indeed,” replied Shakashik. • “Eat heartily, then,” said his host, “and do not be ashamed!” • “I thank you, sir,” answered Shakashik, “but I have already eaten my fill.” • Presently, however, the old man clapped his hands again and cried: “Bring in the wine!” • . . . “Sir,” said Shakashik, “your
generosity overwhelms me!” He lifted the invisible cup to his lips, and made as if to drain it at one gulp. • “Health and joy to you!” exclaimed the old man, as he pretended to pour himself some wine and drink it off. He handed another cup to his guest, and they both continued to act in this fashion until Shakashik, feigning himself drunk, began to roll his head from side to side. Then, taking his bounteous host unawares, he suddenly raised his arm so high that the white of his armpit could be seen, and dealt him a blow on the neck which made the hall echo with the sound. And this he followed by a second blow. • The old man rose in anger and cried: “What are you doing, vile
creature?” • “Sir,” replied my brother, “you have received your humble slave into your house and loaded him with your generosity; you have fed him with the choicest food and quenched his thirst with the most potent wines. Alas, he became drunk, and forgot his manners! But you are so noble, sir, that you will surely pardon his offence.’ •When he
heard these words, the old man burst out laughing and said: ”For a long time I have jested with all
types of men, but no one has ever had the patience or the wit to enter into my humors as you have done. Now, therefore, I pardon you, and ask you in truth to eat and drink with me, and to be my companion as long as I live. ” • Then the old man ordered his attendants to serve all the dishes which they had consumed in fancy, and when he and my brother had eaten their fill they repaired to the drinking chamber, where beautiful young women sang and made music. The old Barmecide gave
Shakashik a robe of honor and made him his constant companion.
—“THE TALE OF SHAKASHIK. THE BARDER’S SIXTH BROTHER,” TALES FROM THE THOUSAND AND ONE NIGHTS, TRANSLATED BY N.J. DAWOOD
Inevitably, of course, he made passes at her. She was an attractive woman. First there was the hand on top of her hand, then a stolen kiss. She spurned him every time, making it clear she was happily married, but she was worried: if all he had wanted was an affair, the whole book deal could
fall apart. Once again, though, her straightforward strategy seemed the right one. Surprisingly, he backed down without anger or resentment. He promised that his affection for her would remain platonic. She had to admit that he was not at all what she had expected, or what had been described to her. Perhaps he liked being dominated by a woman.
The interviews continued for several months, and she noticed slight
changes in him. She still addressed him familiarly, spicing the conversation with brazen comments, but now he returned them, delighting in this kind of saucy banter. He assumed the same lively mood that she strategically forced on herself. At first he had dressed in military uniform, or in his Italian suits.
Now he dressed casually, even going barefoot, conforming to the casual
style of their relationship. One night he remarked that he liked the color of her hair. It was Clairol, blue-black, she explained. He wanted to have the
same color; she had to bring him a bottle. She did as he asked, imagining he
was joking, but a few days later he requested her presence at the palace to dye his hair for him. She did so, and now they had the exact same hair color.
The book, Sukarno: An Autobiography as Told to Cindy Adams, was published in 1965. To American readers’ surprise, Sukarno came across as remarkably charming and lovable, which was indeed how Adams described him to one and all. If anyone argued, she would say that they did not know him the way she did. Sukarno was well pleased, and had the book distributed far and wide. It helped gain sympathy for him in Indonesia,
where he was now being threatened with a military coup. And Sukarno was not surprised—he had known all along that Adams would do a far better job with his memoirs than any “serious” journalist.
Interpretation. Who was seducing whom? It was Sukarno who was doing the seducing, and his seduction of Adams followed a classical sequence. First, he chose the right victim. An experienced journalist would have resisted the lure of a personal relationship with the subject, and a man
would have been less susceptible to his charm. And so he picked a woman, and one whose journalistic experience lay elsewhere. At his first meeting with Adams, he sent mixed signals: he was friendly to her, but hinted at another kind of interest as well. Then, having insinuated a doubt in her mind (Perhaps he just wants an affair?), he proceeded to mirror her. He indulged her every mood, retreating every time she complained. Indulging a person is a form of entering their spirit, letting them dominate for the time being.
Perhaps Sukarno’s passes at Adams showed his uncontrollable libido at work, or perhaps they were more cunning. He had a reputation as a Don Juan; failing to make a pass at her would have hurt her feelings. (Women are often less offended at being found attractive than one imagines, and Sukarno was clever enough to have given each of his four wives the impression that she was his favorite.) The pass out of the way, he moved further into her spirit, taking on her casual air, even slightly feminizing himself by adopting her hair color. The result was that she decided he was not what she had expected or feared him to be. He was not in the least
threatening, and after all, she was the one in control. What Adams failed to realize was that once her defenses were lowered, she was oblivious to how deeply he had engaged her emotions. She had not charmed him, he had charmed her. What he wanted all along was what he got: a personal memoir written by a sympathetic foreigner, who gave the world a rather engaging portrait of a man of whom many were suspicious.
Of all the seductive tactics, entering someone’s spirit is perhaps the most devilish of all. It gives your victims the feeling that they are seducing you. The fact that you are indulging them, imitating them, entering their spirit,
suggests that you are under their spell. You are not a dangerous seducer to be wary of, but someone compliant and unthreatening. The attention you pay to them is intoxicating—since you are mirroring them, everything they see and hear from you reflects their own ego and tastes. What a boost to their vanity. All this sets up the seduction, the series of maneuvers that will turn the dynamic around. Once their defenses are down, they are open to your subtle influence. Soon you will begin to take over the dance, and without even noticing the shift, they will find themselves entering your spirit. This is the endgame.
Women are not at their ease except with those who take chances with them, and enter into their spirit.
—NINON DE L’ENCLOS
Keys to Seduction
One of the great sources of frustration in our lives is other people’s stubbornness. How hard it is to reach them, to make them see things our way. We often have the impression that when they seem to be listening to us, and apparently agreeing with us, it is all superficial—the moment we are gone, they revert to their own ideas. We spend our lives butting up against people, as if they were stone walls. But instead of complaining about how misunderstood or ignored you are, why not try something different: instead of seeing other people as spiteful or indifferent, instead of trying to figure out why they act the way they do, look at them through the eyes of the
seducer. The way to lure people out of their natural intractability and self- obsession is to enter their spirit.
All of us are narcissists. When we were children our narcissism was physical: we were interested in our own image, our own body, as if it were a separate being. As we grow older, our narcissism grows more psychological: we become absorbed in our own tastes, opinions, experiences. A hard shell forms around us. Paradoxically, the way to entice people out of this shell is to become more like them, in fact a kind of mirror image of them. You do not have to spend days studying their minds; simply conform to their moods, adapt to their tastes, play along with whatever they send your way. In doing so you will lower their natural defensiveness. Their sense of self-esteem does not feel threatened by your strangeness or different habits. People truly love themselves, but what they love most of all is to see their ideas and tastes reflected in another person. This validates them. Their habitual insecurity vanishes. Hypnotized by their mirror image, they relax. Now that their inner wall has crumbled, you can slowly draw them out, and eventually turn the dynamic around. Once they are open to you, it becomes easy to infect them with your own moods and heat.
Entering the other person’s spirit is a kind of hypnosis; it is the most insidious and effective form of persuasion known to man.
In the eighteenth-century Chinese novel The Dream of the Red Chamber, all the young girls in the prosperous house of Chia are in love with the rakish Pao Yu. He is certainly handsome, but what makes him irresistible is his uncanny ability to enter a young girl’s spirit. Pao Yu has spent his youth around girls, whose company he has always preferred. As a result, he never comes over as threatening and aggressive. He is granted entry to girls’ rooms, they see him everywhere, and the more they see him the more they fall under his spell. It is not that Pao Yu is feminine; he remains a man, but one who can be more or less masculine as the situation requires. His familiarity with young girls allows him the flexibility to enter their spirit.
This is a great advantage. The difference between the sexes is what
makes love and seduction possible, but it also involves an element of fear and distrust. A woman may fear male aggression and violence; a man is often unable to enter a woman’s spirit, and so he remains strange and threatening. The greatest seducers in history, from Casanova to John E Kennedy, grew up surrounded by women and had a touch of femininity
themselves. The philosopher Søren Kierkegaard, in his novel The Seducer’s Diary, recommends spending more time with the opposite sex, getting to
know the “enemy” and its weaknesses, so that you can turn this knowledge to your advantage.
Ninon de l’Enclos, one of the greatest seductresses who ever lived, had definite masculine qualities. She could impress a man with her intense philosophical keenness, and charm him by seeming to share his interest in
politics and warfare. Many men first formed deep friendships with her, only to later fall madly in love. The masculine in a woman is as soothing to men as the feminine in a man is to women. To a man, a woman’s strangeness can create frustration and even hostility. He may be lured into a sexual encounter, but a longer-lasting spell cannot be created without an accompanying mental seduction. The key is to enter his spirit. Men are often seduced by the masculine element in a woman’s behavior or character.
In the novel Clarissa (1748) by Samuel Richardson, the young and devout Clarissa Harlowe is being courted by the notorious rake Lovelace. Clarissa knows Lovelace’s reputation, but for the most part he has not acted as she would expect: he is polite, seems a little sad and confused. At one point she finds out that he has done a most noble and charitable deed to a family in distress, giving the father money, helping the man’s daughter get married, giving them wholesome advice. At last Lovelace confesses to
Clarissa what she has suspected: he wants to repent, to change his ways. His letters to her are emotional, almost religious in their passion. Perhaps she will be the one to lead him to righteousness? But of course Lovelace has trapped her: he is using the seducer’s tactic of mirroring her tastes, in this
case her spirituality. Once she lets her guard down, once she believes she can reform him, she is doomed: now he can slowly insinuate his own spirit into his letters and encounters with her. Remember: the operative word is “spirit,” and that is often exactly where to take aim. By seeming to mirror someone’s spiritual values you can seem to establish a deep-rooted harmony between the two of you, which can then be transferred to the physical plane.
When Josephine Baker moved to Paris, in 1925, as part of an all-black revue, her exoticism made her an overnight sensation. But the French are notoriously fickle, and Baker sensed that their interest in her would quickly pass to someone else. To seduce them for good, she entered their spirit. She
learned French and began to sing in it. She started dressing and acting as a stylish French lady, as if to say that she preferred the French way of life to the American. Countries are like people: they have vast insecurities, and they feel threatened by other customs. It is often quite seductive to a people to see an outsider adopting their ways. Benjamin Disraeli was born and lived all his life in England, but he was Jewish by birth, and had exotic features; the provincial English considered him an outsider. Yet he was
more English in his manners and tastes than many an Englishman, and this was part of his charm, which he proved by becoming the leader of the
Conservative Party. Should you be an outsider (as most of us ultimately are), turn it to advantage: play on your alien nature in such a way as to show the group how deeply you prefer their tastes and customs to your own.
In 1752, the notorious rake Saltykov determined to be the first man in the Russian court to seduce the twenty-three-year-old grand duchess, the future Empress Catherine the Great. He knew that she was lonely; her husband Peter ignored her, as did many of the other courtiers. And yet the obstacles were immense: she was spied on day and night. Still, Saltykov managed to befriend the young woman, and to enter her all-too-small circle. He finally got her alone, and made it clear to her how well he understood her loneliness, how deeply he disliked her husband, and how much he shared her interest in the new ideas that were sweeping Europe. Soon he found himself able to arrange further meetings, where he gave her the impression that when he was with her, nothing else in the world mattered. Catherine fell deeply in love with him, and he did in fact become her first lover.
Saltykov had entered her spirit.
When you mirror people, you focus intense attention on them. They will sense the effort you are making, and will find it flattering. Obviously you have chosen them, separating them out from the rest. There seems to be nothing else in your life but them—their moods, their tastes, their spirit.
The more you focus on them, the deeper the spell you produce, and the intoxicating effect you have on their vanity.
Many of us have difficulty reconciling the person we are right now with the person we want to be. We are disappointed that we have compromised our youthful ideals, and we still imagine ourselves as that person who had so much promise, but whom circumstances prevented from realizing it.
When you are mirroring someone, do not stop at the person they have
become; enter the spirit of that ideal person they wanted to be. This is how the French writer Chateaubriand managed to become a great seducer,
despite his physical ugliness. When he was growing up, in the latter eighteenth century, romanticism was coming into fashion, and many young women felt deeply oppressed by the lack of romance in their lives.
Chateaubriand would reawaken the fantasy they had had as young girls of being swept off their feet, of fulfilling romantic ideals. This form of entering another’s spirit is perhaps the most effective kind, because it makes people feel better about themselves. In your presence, they live the life of
the person they had wanted to be—a great lover, a romantic hero, whatever it is. Discover those crushed ideals and mirror them, bringing them back to life by reflecting them back to your target. Few can resist such a lure.
Symbol: The Hunter’s Mirror. The lark is a savory bird, but difficult to catch. In the field, the hunter places a mirror on a stand. The lark lands in front of the glass, steps back and forth, entranced by its own moving image and by the imitative mating dance it sees performed before its eyes. Hypnotized, the bird loses all sense of its surroundings, until the hunter’s net traps it against the mirror.
This desire for a double of the other sex that
resembles us absolutely while still being other, for a magical creature who is ourself while possessing the advantage, over all our imaginings, of an
autonomous existence. We find traces of it in
even the most banal circumstances of love: in the attraction linked to any change, any disguise, as in the importance of unison and the repetition of self in the other The great, the implacable amorous
passions are all linked to the fact that a being
imagines he sees his most secret self spying upon him behind the curtain of another’s eyes.
—ROBERT MUSIL, QUOTED IN DENIS DE ROUGEMONT, LOVE DECLARED
TRANSLATED BY RICHARD HOWARD
Reversal
In 1897 in Berlin, the poet Rainer Maria Rilke, whose reputation would later circle the world, met Lou Andreas-Salomé, the Russian-born writer and beauty who was notorious for having broken Nietzsche’s heart. She was the darling of Berlin intellectuals, and although Rilke was twenty-two and
she was thirty-six, he fell head over heels in love with her. He flooded her with love letters, which showed that he had read all her books and knew her tastes intimately The two became friends. Soon she was editing his poetry, and he hung on her every word.
Salomé was flattered by Rilke’s mirroring of her spirit, enchanted by the intense attention he paid her and the spiritual communion they began to develop. She became his lover. But she was worried about his future; it was difficult to make a living as a poet, and she encouraged him to learn her
native language, Russian, and become a translator. He followed her advice so avidly that within months he could speak Russian. They visited Russia together, and Rilke was overwhelmed by what he saw—the peasants, the folk customs, the art, the architecture. Back in Berlin, he turned his rooms into a kind of shrine to Russia, and started wearing Russian peasant blouses and peppering his conversation with Russian phrases. Now the charm of his mirroring soon wore off. At first Salomé had been flattered that he shared her interests so intensely, but now she saw this as something else: he seemed to have no real identity. He had become dependent on her for his own self-esteem. It was all so slavish. In 1899, much to his horror, she
broke off the relationship.
The lesson is simple: your entry into a person’s spirit must be a tactic, a way to bring him or her under your spell. You cannot be simply a sponge, soaking up the other person’s moods. Mirror them for too long and they will see through you and be repelled by you. Beneath the similarity to them that you make them see, you must have a strong underlying sense of your own identity. When the time comes, you will want to lead them into your spirit; you cannot live on their turf. Never take mirroring too far, then. It is only useful in the first phase of a seduction; at some point the dynamic must be reversed.
