The Art of Seduction: An Indispensible Primer on the Ultimate Form of Power

Content Warning: The source material includes references to suicide, sexual assault, domestic violence, and incest.

Power is an underlying component of both romantic and political seduction. Seducers seek and gain power by using love to manipulate, implementing psychological tactics, and capitalizing on imbalanced relationships.

Greene’s initial discussion of seduction involves comparisons between men and women’s power, historically. He claims that women’s only power in the ancient world was sex and argues that seduction was “the ultimate form of power and persuasion” (xx) because women used psychological tactics to seduce men, gaining power through manipulation.

Manipulation is about power because manipulators center their own goals and ignore the feelings of the people they want to manipulate. This creates imbalanced relationships with dependency and victimization: “The manipulator has strong needs to attain feelings of power and superiority in relationships with other people” (Braiker, Harriet B. Who’s Pulling Your Strings?: How to Break the Cycle of Manipulation and Regain Control of Your Life. McGraw-Hill, 2004). Greene’s techniques involve manipulation, such as creating insecurity and anxiety, isolation, and causing confusion—all tactics that create an imbalance of power, dysfunction, and dependency between the seducer and their interest. Both the Coquette and the Charmer aim to make their interest dependent and create an imbalance of power in the relationship.