We are far from equal in our ability to please other people. Why are some of us endowed with a special charm, while others do not catch the eye? The opinion of a psychoanalyst.
Psychologies: Is charm an innate quality?
Gisele Arrus-Revidy: No, although a child experiences pleasure from a very early age when he feels that the people around him like him. You probably noticed that some children have a special charm: if they look at us, we are immediately touched. But their charm is due not so much to physical attractiveness as to the ability to establish contact: cute children know how to attract benevolent attention. Why do they like to please? It’s all about the mother. The child becomes charming because his mother likes his body, his smell. The look of the mother makes us attractive because it supports our narcissistic component, the very vital energy that gives impetus to personal development. A person acquires the ability to please due to the fact that in his life there was a time when he felt himself the center of the universe, believed in his omnipotence. This belief gives us a sense of our own value, uniqueness. It is also very important that our surroundings gladly accept signs of love from us.
WE GET THE ABILITY TO PLEASE ONLY THANKS TO THAT TIME IN OUR LIFE WHEN WE FEEL ALL-POWERFUL.
Who is more likely to suffer from a lack of ability to attract sympathy?
J. A-R.: Often in this position is the middle child in the family, to whom parents, too busy with the older and younger, pay less attention. This may be a girl who was born when parents dreamed of a son (for example, if the family already had two daughters), or a boy who was born in a similar situation. “Uncharismatic” children also grow up, whose father and mother have not yet matured enough to be distracted from themselves and see their child for real. To feel entitled to captivate others, we need a look that makes us stand out and makes us feel that we are unique. But if the mother treats the child as an exceptional being — I mean the only child who is admired no matter what he does — then, as an adult, he will be so sure of his own irresistibility that he simply does not consider it necessary to make an effort to anyone to like.
How to make up for this lack of charm?
J. A-R.: A person «unloved» always has to prove his own worth to others and again and again be convinced of it himself. And every now and then they explain to us that the ability to please, to seduce is a gain. Women’s magazines offer techniques, recipes, and special trainings … But is this genuine charm? Hard to say! Now, if at the trainings they were taught to be interested in their interlocutor, to listen to him … Who knows, maybe something worthwhile would have come out of this!
Could the inability to please be related to neurosis?
J. A-R.: The fact that a person considers himself incapable of liking is rarely described as a nervous breakdown, although there are a lot of such people. Seducing, attracting attention to yourself — all these are natural components of our relationship. And if they are blocked by the conviction “No one can like me”, then this, I think, can already be called a personality pathology. Such a person closes himself in the role of an outcast, a loser, thereby unconsciously confirming the correctness of his mother, who, most likely, once looked at him with an empty or bored look. He does not look after himself, he dresses in such a way as not to attract attention to himself, because he is sure that no one is interested in him anyway. Often he suffers from a strong sense of guilt and doubts whether he even has the right to exist. He usually speaks very quietly so as not to disturb anyone. Such a person thinks about the mysterious charm that others are endowed with and which, as he believes, he alone is deprived. “If I am an empty place for my own mother,” he seems to be telling himself, “then for the rest, and even more so.” In my practice, I have encountered similar sensations even in adults, whose social life has developed quite successfully at first glance.
And if you look from the other side: what kind of childhood did a person with a heightened need to please others have?
J. A-R.: I think he experienced a conflict between too early development of his sexuality and extremely rigid parental prohibitions. He could not cope with the uncontrollable and incomprehensible excitement. And at the same time he felt that in relations with his parents he becomes a passive object. The prohibitions did not structure his libido, but suppressed and blocked it. For such a person, to please is to break the taboo. This is an unconscious strategy to combat the attitudes of the father and mother.
A seducer who collects love victories. A manipulator who capitalizes on his attractiveness. The mysterious charm of the fatal woman. What do these three phenomena have in common?
To seduce another always means to deceive him to some extent, to lure him into a trap, albeit unconsciously. The professional seducer is always misleading about his intentions. And the manipulator, trying to enchant, deceives us about the “product” that he advertises: reality will always be paler than the seductive image inspired by us. Seduction in general must certainly be accompanied by an aura of mystery. Fatal women, for example, seduce with silence: in their company you can indulge in fantasies and imagine anything you like.
Charisma is the highest degree of seduction and the ability to please?
J. A-R.: Charisma is a completely different matter. It manifests itself primarily in speech, in words. A charismatic person can be a monster — remember Hitler; or a great psychoanalyst like Jacques Lacan or Françoise Dolto. Those who are endowed with charisma have a developed narcissistic side, which makes them especially self-confident. They seem to radiate this confidence, almost hypnotize those around them with it. Turning to the audience, they convey to it the energy that inspires people and gives everyone the illusion of belonging to the elite. This is why charismatics are dangerous: they are able to create discord, to divide people into “good” and “bad”.