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.”

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.

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.

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.

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.