F I N D I N G T H E THUMBSCREW: A Strategie Plan of Action We all have resistances, We live with a perpetual arrnor around oUfselves to de...
F I N D I N G T H E THUMBSCREW: A Strategie Plan of Action We all have resistances, We live with a perpetual arrnor around oUfselves to defend against change and the intrusive actions of friends and rivals. We would like no thing more than to be left to do things our own way. Constantly butting up against these resistances will cost you a lot of energy. One of the most important things to realize about people, though, is that they all have a weakness, some part of their psychological arrnor that will not resist, that will bend to your will if you find it and push on it.
Some peopIe wear their weaknesses openly, others disguise them. Those who disguise them are often the ones most effectively undone through that one chink in their arrnor. In planning YOUf assault, keep these principles in mind: Pay Attention to Gestures and Unconscious Signals. As Sigmund Freud remarked, "No mortal can keep a secret. If his lips are silent, he chatters with his fingertips; betrayal oozes out of hirn at every pore." This is a critical concept in the search for a person's weakness-it is revealed by seemingly unimportant ge stures and passing words. The key is not only what you look for but where and how you look. Everyday conversation supplies the richest mine of weaknesses, so train yourself to listen. Start by always seeming interested-the appearance of a sympathetic ear will SpUf anyone to talk. A clever trick, often used by the nineteenth-century French statesman Talleyrand, is to appear to open up to the other person, to share a secret with them. It can be completely made up, or it can be real but of no great importance to you-the important thing is that it should seern to come from the heart. This will usually elicit a response that is not only as frank as Y0ufS but more genuine--a response that reveals a weakness.
If you suspect that someone has a particular soft spot, probe for it indirectly. If, for instance, you sense that a man has a need to be loved, openly flatter him. If he laps up Y0uf compliments, no matter how obvious, you are on the right track. Train Y0uf eye for details-how someone tips a waiter, what delights a person, the hidden messages in clothes. Find people's idols, the things they worship and will do anything to get-perhaps you can be the supplier of their fantasies. Remember: Since we all try to hide Ouf weaknesses, there is little to be learned from Ouf conscious behavior. What oozes out in the little things outside Ouf conscious control is what you want to know. Find the Helpless Child. Most weaknesses begin in childhood, before the self builds up compensatory defenses.
Perhaps the child was pampered or indulged in a particular area, or perhaps a certain emotional need went unfulfilled; as he or she grows older, the indulgence or the deficiency may be buried but never disappears. Knowing about a childhood need gives you a powerful key to a person's weakness. One sign of this weakness is that when you touch on it the person will often act like a child, Be on the lookout, then, for any behavior that should have been outgrown. If your victims or rivals went without something important, such as parental support, when they were children, supply it, or its facsimile. If they reveal a secret taste, a hidden indulgence, indulge it. In either case they will be unable to resist you. Look for Contrasts. An overt trait often conceals its opposite.
People who thump their chests are often big cowards; a prudish exterior may hide a lascivious soul; the uptight are often screaming for adventure; the shy are dying for attention. By probing beyond appearances, you will often find people's weaknesses in the opposite of the qualities they reveal to you. Find the Weak Link. Sometimes in your search for weaknesses it is not what but who that matters. In today's versions of the court, there is often someone behind the scenes who has a great deal of power, a tremendous influence over the person superficially on top. These behind-the-scenes powerbrokers are the group's weak link: Win their favor and you indirectly influence the king. Altematively, even in a group of people acting with the appearance of one will-as when a group und er attack closes ranks to resist an outsider-there is always a weak link in the chain. Find the one person who will bend under pressure. Fill the Void. The two main emotional voids to fill are insecurity and unhappiness. The insecure are suckers for any kind of social validation; as for the chronically unhappy, look for the roots of their unhappiness. The inse- eure and the unhappy are the people least able to disguise their weaknesses. The ability to fill their emotional voids is a great source of power, and an indefinitely prolongable one.
Feed on Uncontrollable Emotions. The uncontrollable emotion can be a paranoid fear-a fear disproportionate to the situation-or any base motive such as lust, greed, vanity, or hatred. People in the grip of these emotions often cannot control themselves, and you can do the controlling for them. OBSERVANCES OF TH E LAW Observance I In 1615 the thirty-year-old bishop ofLU/;:on, later known as Cardinal RicheHeu, gave a speech before representatives of the three estates of Franceclergy, nobility, and commoners. Richelieu had been chosen to serve as the mouthpiece for the clergy-an immense responsibility for a man still young and not particularly well known. On all of the important issues of the day, the speech followed the Church line. But near the end of it RicheHeu did something that had nothing to do with the Church and everything to do with his career. He tumed to the throne of the fifteen-year-old King Louis XIII,
and to the Queen Mother Marie de' Medicis, who sat beside Then what did his dear friend do? He cautiously made his way down to the bottom of the ravine, and there, out in the open space and the free air, seeing that the !ion wanted neither f/attery nor obedience now, he set to work to pay the last sad rites to his dead friend, and in a month picked his bones clean. FABLES, IVAN KRILOFF, 1768-1844 lHVI!\(; LAZAB [Hollywood superagent] /rving Paul Lazar was once anxious to seil [studio mogul} Jack L. Warn er a play. "/ had a long meeting with him today, " Lazar explained [10 screenwriter Garson Kanin], "but / didn't mention it, / didn 't even bring it up." " Why not? " / asked. "Because I'm going to wait until the weekend after next, when / go to Pa/m Springs. "
"[ don't understand. " " You don't? [ go to Pa/m Springs every weekend, but Warn er isn't going this weekend. He's got a preview or something. So he:, not coming down till the next weekend, so that's when Fm going to bring it up. " "/rving, Fm more and LAW 33 273 more eonfused. " "Look," said I rving impatiently, "[ know what l'm doing. [ know IIOW to seil Warner. This is a type of material that he :,. uneasy with, so I have to hit him with it hant and suddenly 10 get an okay. " "But why Palm Springs? " "Because in Palm Springs, every day he goes 10 Ihe bath" al The Spa. And Iha!'s where l 'm going 10 be when he's Ihere. Now there 's a Ihing aboul lack: He 's eighly ami he's very va in, and he doesn'l like people 10 see him naked. So when I walk up to him naked al The Spa-I mean he's naked-well, l'm naked 100, but I don't ca re who sees me.
He does. And I walk up to him naked, and [ starl to talk 10 him aboul Ihis thing, he 'lI be very embarrassed. And he 'lI wanl 10 gel away from me, and Ihe easiesl way is to say . Yes, , bccause he knows if he says 'No, ' then I'm going to stick wilh him, ami slay righl on il, and not give up. So 10 gel rid of me, he 'lI probably say, ' Yes. ' " Two weeks laler, I read of Ihe aequisilion of Ihis partieular properly by Warner Brolhers. I phoned Lazar and asked how it had been aecomplished. "How do you Ihink?" he asked. "In Ihe buf!' Iha!'s how ... jusl Ihe way [ told you il was going 10 work. " 1I0LLYWOOO. G ARSON KANIN. 1974 274 LAW 33 Louis, as the regent ruling France until her son reached his majority, Everyone expected Richelieu to say the usual kind words to the young king. Instead, however, he looked directly at and only at the queen mother. Indeed his speech ended in long and fulsome praise of her, praise so glowing that it actually offended some in the Church. But the smile on the queen's face as she lapped up Richelieu's compliments was unforgettable. A year later the queen mother appointed Richelieu secretary of state for foreign affairs, an incredible coup for the young bishop. He had now entered the inner cirele of power, and he studied the workings of the court as if it were the machinery of a watch. An Italian, Concino Concini, was the queen mother's favorite, or rather her lover, a role that made hirn perhaps the most powerful man in France. Concini was vain and foppish, and Richelieu played him perfectly-attending to him as if he were the king. Within months Richelieu had become one of Concini's favorites. But something happened in 1617 that turned everything upside down: the young king, who up until then had shown every sign of being an idiot, had Concini murdered and his most important associates imprisoned, In so doing Louis took command of the country with one blow, sweeping the queen mother aside. Had Richelieu played it wrong? He had been elose to both Concini and Marie de Medicis, whose advisers and ministers were now all out of favor, some even arrested. The queen mother herself was shut up in the Louvre, a virtual prisoner. Richelieu wasted no time. If everyone was deserting Marie de Medicis, he would stand by her. He knew Louis could not get rid of her, for the king was still very young, and had in any case always been inordinately attached to her. As Marie's only remaining powerful friend, Richelieu filled the valuable function of liaison between the king and his mother. In return he received her protection, and was able to survive the palace coup, even to thrive. Over the next few years the queen mother grew still more dependent on hirn, and in 1622 she repaid hirn for his loyalty: Through the intercession of her allies in Rome, Richelieu was elevated to the powerful rank of cardinal. By 1623 King Louis was in trouble. He had no one he could trust to advise hirn, and although he was now a young man instead of a boy, he remained childish in spirit, and affairs of state came hard to hirn. Now that he had taken the throne, Marie was no longer the regent and theoretically had no power, but she still had her son's ear, and she kept telling him that Richelieu was his only possible savior. At first Louis would have none of it-he hated the cardinal with a passion, only tolerating him out of love for Marie. In the end, however, isolated in the court and crippled by his own indecisiveness, he yielded to his mother and made Richelieu first his chief councilor and later prime minister. Now Richelieu no longer needed Marie de Medicis. He stopped visiting and courting her, stopped listening to her opinions, even argued with her and opposed her wishes. Instead he concentrated on the king, making himself indispensable to his new master. All the previous premiers, understanding the king's childishness, had tried to keep him out of trouble; the shrewd Richelieu played hirn differently, deliberately pushing hirn into one ambitious project after another, such as a crusade against the Huguenots and finally an extended war with Spain. The immensity of these projects only made the king more dependent on his powerful premier, the only man able to keep order in the realm. And so, for the next eighteen years, Richelieu, exploiting the king's weaknesses, govemed and molded France according to his own vision, unifying the country and making it a strong European power for centuries to come.
Interpretation Richelieu saw everything as a military campaign, and no strategie move was more important to hirn than discovering his enemy's weaknesses and applying pressure to them. As early as his speech in 1615, he was looking for the weak link in the chain of power, and he saw that it was the queen mother. Not that Marie was obviously weak-she govemed both France and her son; but Richelieu saw that she was really an insecure woman who needed constant masculine attention. He showered her with affection and respect, even toadying up to her favorite, Concini.
He knew the day would come when the king would take over, but he also recognized that Louis loved his mother dearly and would always remain a child in relation to her. The way to control Louis, then, was not by gaining his favor, which could change ovemight, but by gaining sway over his mother, for whom his affection would never change. Once Richelieu had the position he desired-prime minister-he discarded the queen mother, moving on to the next weak link in the chain: the king's own character. There was a part of hirn that would always be a helpless child in need of higher authority. 1t was on the foundation of the king's weakness that Richelieu established his own power and farne. Remember: When entering the court, find the weak link. The person in control is often not the king or queen; it is someone behind the scenesthe favorite, the husband or wife, even the court fool. This person may have more weaknesses than the king hirnself, because his power depends on all kinds of capricious factors outside his control. Finally, when dealing with helpless children who cannot make decisions, play on their weakness and push them into bold ventures. They will have to depend on you even more, for you will become the adult figure whom they rely on to get them out of scrapes and to safety.
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