The Art of Seduction

by Robert Greene

What will seduce a person is the effort we expend on their behalf, showing how much we care, how much they are worth.

First, self-absorption is a sign of insecurity; it is anti-seductive.

People are dying to be overwhelmed, to let go of their usual stubbornness.

Most people feel they have constricted roles in life, which makes them unhappy.

natural.

Here the author is deluded. To love or be loved requires honesty. Without this, the other will bes there for us only so long as we are strong enough to maintain an act. What you should look for is the security of on who loves in both strength and weakness. In moments of weakness we see where we need a loyal love most.

victims.

Victim blaming.

We are charmed by an unabashed Rake and excuse his excesses, but a halfhearted Rake gets no respect.

In today’s world this fantasy can only appeal the more strongly to the male psyche, for now more than ever he lives in a world that circumscribes his aggressive instincts by making everything safe and secure, a world that offers less chance for adventure and risk than ever before.

What the Rake offers is what society normally does not allow women: an affair of pure pleasure, an exciting brush with danger.

In the old days, a Rake was often an aristocrat, and no matter how many people he offended or even killed, in the end he would go unpunished.

You cannot be a Rake by being fearful and prudent; the occasional pummeling is part of the game.

Hint at something for them to aspire to, reveal your faith in some untapped potential you see in them, and you will soon have them eating out of your hand.

Valentino dressed and played with his physicality like a woman, but his image was masculine. He wooed as a woman would woo if she were a man—slowly, attentively, paying attention to details, setting a rhythm instead of hurrying to a conclusion.

Many of us today imagine that sexual freedom has progressed in recent years—that everything has changed, for better or worse. This is mostly an illusion; a reading of history reveals periods of licentiousness (imperial Rome, late-seventeenth-century England, the “floating world” of eighteenth-century Japan) far in excess of what we are currently experiencing.

Society is in a state of constant flux, but there is something that does not change: the vast majority of people conform to whatever is normal for the time.

At certain points in history it may be fashionable to be different and rebellious, but if a lot of people are playing that role, there is nothing different or rebellious about it.

In the court of Louis XIV, the writer La Bruyère noticed that courtiers who tried hard to please were invariably on the way down; nothing was more anti-seductive. As Barbey d’Aurevilly wrote, “Dandies please women by displeasing them.”

The opposite sex is a strange country we can never know, and this excites us, creates the proper sexual tension.

According to Freud, the human libido is essentially bisexual; most people are in some way attracted to people of their own sex, but social constraints (varying with culture and historical period) repress these impulses.

In a society where the roles everyone plays are obvious, the refusal to conform to any standard will excite interest.

Long-past ages have a great and often puzzling attraction for men’s imagination. Whenever they are dissatisfied with their present surroundings—and this happens often enough—they turn back to the past and hope that they will now be able to prove the truth of the inextinguishable dream of a golden age. They are probably still under the spell of their childhood, which is presented to them by their not impartial memory as a time of uninterrupted bliss. —SIGMUND FREUD, THE STANDARD EDITION OF THE COMPLETE PSYCHOLOGICAL WORKS OF SIGMUND FREUD, VOLUME

In the presence of children we become less rigid, infected with their openness. That is why we want to be around them.

“Geographical” escapism has been rendered ineffective by the spread of air routes. What remains is “evolutionary” escapism—a downward course in one’s development, back to the ideas and emotions of “golden childhood,” which may well be defined as “regress towards infantilism,” escape to a personal world of childish ideas. • In a strictly-regulated society, where life follows strictly-defined canons, the urge to escape from the chain of things “established once and for all” must be felt particularly strongly. ...

According to Freud (who was speaking from experience, since he was his mother’s darling), spoiled children have a confidence that stays with them all their lives.

People are inherently perverse. An easy conquest has a lower value than a difficult one; we are only really excited by what is denied us, by what we cannot possess in full.

Once our vanity is at stake, we succumb to the Coquette just to prove we are still desirable.

As children, he explains, we pass through a narcissistic phase that is immensely pleasurable. Happily self-contained and self-involved, we have little psychic need of other people. Then, slowly, we are socialized and taught to pay attention to others—but we secretly yearn for those blissful early days.

Self-esteem is critical in seduction. (Your attitude toward yourself is read by the other person in subtle and unconscious ways.) Low self-esteem repels, confidence and self-sufficiency attract. The less you seem to need other people, the more likely others will be drawn to you.

Chase your shadow and it will, flee; turn your back on it and it will follow you.

Birds are taken with pipes that imitate their own voices, and men with those sayings that are most agreeable to their own opinions. —SAMUEL BUTLER

Go easy with lions or tigers if you aim to tame them; \ The bull gets inured to the plough by slow degrees

As Benjamin Disraeli said, “Talk to a man about himself and he will listen for hours.”

You know what charm is: a way of getting the answer yes without having asked any clear question. —ALBERT CAMUS

In a world of bluff and smoke, real action and true helpfulness are perhaps the ultimate charm.

Wax, a substance naturally hard and brittle, can be made soft by the application of a little warmth, so that it will take any shape you please. In the same way, by being polite and friendly, you can make people pliable and obliging, even though they are apt to be crabbed and malevolent. Hence politeness is to human nature what warmth is to wax. —ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER, COUNSELS AND MAXIMS, TRANSLATED BY T. BAILEY SAUNDERS

People who are physically beautiful, and who play on their beauty to create a sexually charged presence, have little power in the end; the bloom of youth fades, there is always someone younger and more beautiful, and in any case people tire of beauty without social grace. But they never tire of feeling their self-worth validated.

Social seducers such as Bill Clinton and Henry Kissinger could often win over the most hardened opponent with their personal charm, but they could not be everywhere at once.

Thousands of years ago, people believed in gods and spirits, but few could ever say that they had witnessed a miracle, a physical demonstration of divine power. A man, however, who seemed possessed by a divine spirit—speaking in tongues, ecstatic raptures, the expression of intense visions-would stand out as one whom the gods had singled out. And this man, a priest or a prophet, gained great power over others.

If people believe you have a plan, that you know where you are going, they will follow you instinctively The direction does not matter: pick a cause, an ideal, a vision and show that you will not sway from your goal.

[The masses] have never thirsted after truth. They demand illusions, and cannot do without them. They constantly give what is unreal precedence over what is real; they are almost as strongly influenced by what is untrue as by what is true. They have an evident tendency not to distinguish between the two. —SIGMUND FREUD, THE STANDARD EDITION OF THE COMPLETE PSYCHOLOGICAL WORKS OF SIGMUND FREUD, VOLUME 18

Most of us live in a semi-somnambulistic state: we do our daily tasks and the days fly by. The two exceptions to this are childhood and those moments when we are in love.