Anger

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce: A 25-Year Landmark Study (2000)

  It is absolutely clear that parents will need in most instances to confer even more frequently and help each other during these years if only to keep the youngster from playing them off against each other or going from home to home in order to avoid responsibilities in either place. I can only conclude that joint custody as a legal presumption for all children is a misguided policy. Although our legal system is mandated to protect the best interest of children, it often makes life harder for them. The emphasis on finding policies that suit all children is unrealistic and detrimental to the individuality of children and their family situations. We need to develop procedures that allow children to discuss their needs and wishes before visiting arrangements are made—and we need to make provisions for monitoring these arrangements through time. Each arrangement should be tailored to individual circumstances. Repeating the Past A WEEK AFTER talking to Racer, I met Paula to discuss what I’d learned. The child was obviously frustrated. I couldn’t help wondering, shouldn’t his mother, who was so unhappy as a child of divorce, have a huge amount of empathy for her son’s predicament and take steps to protect him? I asked Paula if she could do more to accommodate to Racer’s concern that his interests would get no support from either parent. Her face contorted. “I’ve done all the accommodating so far,” she said. “If Brad will back off and come to me, then maybe we can talk. But I’ll be damned if I’m always the one who explains things to Racer, the one who makes the sacrifices. Racer will have to live with who Brad is and who I am— and he’ll have to make the best of it!” I was troubled at her angry response, which had blotted out her genuine concern for her son. But I had seen this before. I decided to try again: “Paula, is there anything you learned from your own experience as a child of divorce that would make it easier for Racer? He’s having a hard time and trying very hard not to show it.” She sat glumly for a moment and then relented. “Maybe during the baseball season, which doesn’t last forever, Brad and I can figure out another custody arrangement that would work better for him. Maybe I should call my ex-mother-in-law.” Sadly, children of divorce who divorce are not better at protecting their children. I’d hoped that they might draw on their own experiences and treat their children with more understanding when their marriages failed. But I was bitterly disappointed. Although all those in our study complained that their parents didn’t explain the divorce to them and failed to ease their adjustment to the new circumstance, they made the same mistakes with their own children. Nor did they welcome the children’s questions or try to understand their troubles.

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  This is how his mother tells it: "I think it was three (detectives) come up and they asked are you Danny Hamm? And he says yes and right away-gun right to the head and slapping him up, one gun here and one here-just all the way down the hall-beating him and knocking him around with the gun to his head." The other boys were arrested in the same way, and, again of course, they were beaten; but this arrest was a far greater torture than the first one had been because some of the mothers did not know where the boys were, and the police, who were holding them, refused for many hours to say that they were holding them. The mothers did not know of what it was their children were accused until they learned, via television, that the charge was murder. At that time in the state of New Y ark, this charge meant death in the electric chair. Let us assume that all six boys are guilty as (eventually) charged. Can anyone pretend that the manner of their arrest, or their treatment, bears any resemblance to equal justice under the law? The Police Department has loftily refused to "dignify the charges." But can anyone pretend that they would dare to take this tone if the case involved, say, the sons ofWall Street brokers? I have witnessed and endured the bru tality of the police many more times than once-but, of course, I cannot prove it. I cannot prove it because the Police Department investigates itself, quite as though it were an swerable only to itself. But it cannot be allowed to be an swerable only to itself; it must be made to answer to the community which pays it, and which it is legally sworn to protect; and if American Negroes arc not a part of the Amer- REPORT FROM OCCUPIED TERRITORY 737 ican community, then all of the American professions are a fr aud. This arrogant autonomy, which is guaranteed the police, not only in New York, by the most powerful forces in American life--otherwise, they would not dare to claim it, would, in deed, be unable to claim it-creates a situation which is as close to anarchy as it already, visibly, is close to martial law. Here is Wallace Baker's mother speaking, describing the night that a police officer came to her house to collect the evidence which he hoped would prove that her son was guilty of murder. The late Mrs. Sugar had run a used-clothing store and the policeman was looking for old coats. "Nasty as he was that night in my house. He didn't ring the bell. So I said, have you got a search warrant? He say, no, I don't have no search warrant and I'm going to search anyway.

• From How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain (2017)

  You would search for all the relevant scientific papers, collect the relevant statistics from them, and analyze them en masse to test the hypothesis. Where emotions and the autonomic nervous system are concerned, four significant meta-analyses have been conducted in the last two decades, the largest of which covered more than 220 physiology studies and nearly 22,000 test subjects. None of these four meta-analyses found consistent and specific emotion fingerprints in the body. Instead, the body’s orchestra of internal organs can play many different symphonies during happiness, fear, and the rest. 26 You can see this variation easily in an experimental procedure used by laboratories around the world, where test subjects perform a difficult task such as counting backward by thirteen as fast as possible, or speaking about a polarizing topic like abortion or religion, while being ridiculed. As they struggle, the experimenter berates them for poor performance, making critical and even insulting remarks. Do all the test subjects get angry? No, they don’t. More importantly, those who do feel angry show different patterns of bodily changes. Some people fume in anger, but some cry. Others become quiet and cunning. Still others just withdraw. Each behavior (fuming, crying, planning, withdrawing) is supported by a different physiological pattern in the body, a detail long known by physiologists who study the body for its own sake. Even small changes in body posture, like lying back versus leaning forward with arms crossed, can completely alter an angry person’s physiological response. 27 When I address audiences at conferences and present these meta-analyses, some people become incredulous: “Are you saying that in a frustrating, humiliating situation, not everyone will get angry so that their blood boils and their palms sweat and their cheeks flush?” And my answer is yes, that is exactly what I am saying. As a matter of fact, earlier in my career, when I was giving my first talks about these ideas, you could see variations in anger firsthand in audience members who really didn’t like the evidence. Sometimes they would shift around in their seats. Other times they shook their head in a silent “no.” Once a colleague yelled at me while his face turned red and he stabbed his finger in the air. Another colleague asked me, in a sympathetic tone, if I had ever felt real fear, because if I’d ever been seriously harmed, I would never be suggesting such a preposterous idea. Yet another colleague said he would tell my brother-in-law (a sociologist of his acquaintance) that I was damaging the science of emotion. My favorite example involved a much more senior colleague, built like a linebacker and towering a foot above me, who cocked his fist and offered to punch me in the face to demonstrate what real anger looks like. (I smiled and thanked him for the thoughtful offer.) In these examples, my colleagues demonstrated the variability of anger far more handily than my presentation did.

• From How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain (2017)

  Is pure reason really the best way to render a wise decision? Imagine a person who is very calmly and coolly weighing the pros and cons about whether or not another person should die. There’s not a trace of emotion in sight. Like Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs, or Anton Chigurh in No Country for Old Men. I am being a bit facetious here, but this kind of dispassionate decision-making is essentially what the law instructs in the sentencing portion of criminal cases. Rather than pretend that affect is absent, it’s better to use affect wisely. As U.S. Supreme Court Justice William Brennan once expressed, “Sensitivity to one’s intuitive and passionate responses, and awareness of the range of human experience, is therefore not only an inevitable but a desirable part of the judicial process, an aspect more to be nurtured than feared.” The key is emotional granularity: having a wide and deep range of concepts (emotion, physical, or otherwise) to make sense of the onslaught of bodily sensations that are the hazards of the job. 57 Consider, for example, a judge faced with a defendant like James Holmes, who murdered twelve moviegoers and injured seventy more during a midnight screening of a Batman movie in Aurora, Colorado, in 2012. Such a judge might reasonably construct an experience of anger, but that feeling alone could be problematic; anger could prompt the judge to punish the defendant too harshly for the sake of retribution, threatening the moral order that the trial is founded on. To balance his view, some legal scholars argue, the judge could try to cultivate empathy for the defendant, who perhaps is insane or a victim of some sort himself. Anger is a form of ignorance; in this case, ignorance of the defendant’s perspective. Holmes clearly struggled with serious mental illness for years. He tried to kill himself for the first time when he was eleven years old, and has attempted suicide several times in jail. Empathy is extremely difficult to cultivate for someone who opens fire on innocents in a movie theater. Even remembering that the defendant is a human being, no matter how severe or gruesome the crime, might be a struggle at times, but this is when empathy might be most important. It may prevent a judge from going too far in punishing the offender during sentencing, and help to ensure the morality of penal decision-making and retributive justice. This is the type of emotional granularity that makes for wise use of emotion in the courtroom. 58 When it comes right down to it, the most useful emotions for a judge to feel depend on the judge’s goals during the trial. What, for example, is the goal of punishment? Is it retribution? Deterrence to avoid future harm? Rehabilitation?

• From How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain (2017)

  Berns, Walter. 1979. For Capital Punishment: Crime and the Morality of the Death Penalty. New York: Basic Books. “Better Than English.” 2016. http://betterthanenglish.com/. Beukeboom, Camiel J., Dion Langeveld, and Karin Tanja-Dijkstra. 2012. “Stress-Reducing Effects of Real and Artificial Nature in a Hospital Waiting Room.” Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine 18 (4): 329–333. Binder, Jeffrey R., and Rutvik H. Desai. 2011. “The Neurobiology of Semantic Memory.” Trends in Cognitive Sciences 15 (11): 527–536. Binder, Jeffrey R., Rutvik H. Desai, William W. Graves, and Lisa L. Conant. 2009. “Where Is the Semantic System? A Critical Review and Meta-Analysis of 120 Functional Neuroimaging Studies.” Cerebral Cortex 19 (12): 2767–2796. Binder, Jeffrey R., Julia A. Frost, Thomas A. Hammeke, P. S. F. Bellgowan, Stephen M. Rao, and Robert W. Cox. 1999. “Conceptual Processing During the Conscious Resting State: A Functional MRI Study.” Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 11 (1): 80–93. Birklein, Frank. 2005. “Complex Regional Pain Syndrome.” Journal of Neurology 252 (2): 131–138. Black, Ryan C., Sarah A. Treul, Timothy R. Johnson, and Jerry Goldman. 2011. “Emotions, Oral Arguments, and Supreme Court Decision Making.” Journal of Politics 73 (2): 572–581. Bliss-Moreau, Eliza, and David G. Amaral. Under review. “Associative Affective Learning Persists Following Early Amygdala Damage in Nonhuman Primates.” Bliss-Moreau, Eliza, Christopher J. Machado, and David G. Amaral. 2013. “Macaque Cardiac Physiology Is Sensitive to the Valence of Passively Viewed Sensory Stimuli.” PLOS One 8 (8): e71170. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0071170. Blow, Charles M. 2015. “Has the N.R.A. Won?” New York Times, April 20. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/20/opinion/charles-blow-has-the-nra-won.html. Blumberg, Mark S., and Greta Sokoloff. 2001. “Do Infant Rats Cry?” Psychological Review 108 (1): 83–95. Blumberg, Mark S., Greta Sokoloff, Robert F. Kirby, and Kristen J. Kent. 2000. “Distress Vocalizations in Infant Rats: What’s All the Fuss About?” Psychological Science 11 (1): 78–81. Boghossian, Paul. 2006. Fear of Knowledge: Against Relativism and Constructivism. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Borsook, David. 2012. “Neurological Diseases and Pain.” Brain 135 (2): 320–344. Bourassa-Perron, Cynthia. 2011. The Brain and Emotional Intelligence: New Insights. Florence, MA: More Than Sound. Bourke, Joanna. 2000. An Intimate History of Killing: Face-to-Face Killing in Twentieth-Century Warfare. New York: Basic Books. Boyd, Robert, Peter J. Richerson, and Joseph Henrich. 2011. “The Cultural Niche: Why Social Learning Is Essential for Human Adaptation.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 108 (Supplement 2): 10918–10925. Brackett, Marc A., Susan E. Rivers, Maria R. Reyes, and Peter Salovey. 2012. “Enhancing Academic Performance and Social and Emotional Competence with the RULER Feeling Words Curriculum.” Learning and Individual Differences 22 (2): 218–224. Bradshaw, John. 2014. Dog Sense: How the New Science of Dog Behavior Can Make You a Better Friend to Your Pet. New York: Basic Books. Brandone, Amanda C., and Henry M. Wellman. 2009. “You Can’t Always Get What You Want: Infants Understand Failed Goal-Directed Actions.” Psychological Science 20 (1): 85–91. Bratman, Gregory N., J. Paul Hamilton, Kevin S. Hahn, Gretchen C. Daily, and James J. Gross. 2015. “Nature Experience Reduces Rumination and Subgenual Prefrontal Cortex Activation.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 112 (28): 8567–8572.

• From The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty (1983)

  Beauty asked. "Always," said the Prince. "But I was in the midst of the soldiers at all times, and completely naked. Even had I managed to reach a villager's cottage or a serf's hut, I would have been overpowered and returned for the ransom money. More humiliation and more degradation. I rode, bound hand and foot and ignominiously thrown over a horse, in a state of fury. "But finally we reached the castle. I was scrubbed, then oiled and brought before her Highness. She was coldly beautiful. This made its impression upon me at once. I had never seen such pretty eyes, yet such cold eyes. And when I refused to be silent or to obey, she laughed. She ordered me gagged with a leather bit. I'm sure you've seen it. Well, mine was bound in place so I couldn't remove it. And then she had me shackled in leather so that I could not rise from my hands and knees. I could move as told, but not rise, the leather collar around my neck securely linked by leather chains to the leather cuffs on my wrists, and those to the cuffs on my legs above the knees. My ankles were linked so they couldn't be spread very wide apart. It was all quite clever. "And then the Queen took her long lead -- as she calls it -- to drive me. It was a rod with a leather-encased phallus on the end of it. I shall never forget the first moment I felt it drive into my anus. She thrust it forward, and in spite of myself I moved ahead of her like an obedient pet as she commanded me. And when I lay down and refused to obey, she only laughed at this, and commenced her work with the paddle. "Well, I was fiercely rebellious. The more she paddled me, the more I growled and refused to obey. So she had me hung upside down and paddled on and off for hours. You can well imagine the misery of it. But understand, other slaves were looking at me in utter confusion. Being stripped, being cuffed, being ordered about with the paddle was quite enough to make them obey, coupled as it was with the knowledge that they could not escape and they must serve for several years, and they were helpless. "Yet nothing worked its magic with me. When I was taken down I was sore from the paddle on my buttocks and my legs, but I did not care. And all attempts to rouse my organ had failed. I was too stubborn. "Lord Gregory lectured me at length. The paddle was far easier to bear with an erect organ, he told me; with passion coursing through my veins, I should see the rhyme and reason of pleasing my mistress.

• From How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain (2017)

  22 For example, consider the case of Jean Banks, an African American woman who stabbed and killed her live-in partner, James “Brother” McDonald, after he had beaten her for years, sometimes so severely that she required medical attention. On this particular day, both had been drinking, and during an argument, McDonald pushed Banks to the ground and attempted to slice her with a glass cutter. Banks grabbed a knife to defend herself and stabbed him through the heart. She claimed self-defense but nonetheless was convicted of second-degree murder. (Compare this to light-skinned Judy Norman, who was convicted of voluntary manslaughter, a lesser charge.) 23 Angry women do not fare well outside of domestic violence cases either. Judges infer all sorts of negative personality characteristics in angry female rape victims that they tend not to attribute to angry male crime victims. When a woman has been raped, for instance, judges (and juries and the police) expect to see her express grief on the witness stand, which tends to bring the rapist a heavier sentence. When a female victim expresses anger, judges evaluate her negatively. These judges are falling prey to another version of the “angry bitch” phenomenon. When people perceive emotion in a man, they usually attribute it to his situation, but when they perceive emotion in a woman, they connect it to her personality. She’s a bitch, but he’s just having a bad day. 24 Outside the courtroom, we find laws where gender stereotypes prescribe the acceptable emotions we must feel and express. Abortion laws, as written, signal which emotions are appropriate for a woman to feel, namely, remorse and guilt, whereas relief and happiness go unmentioned. The debate over the legality of gay marriage was, in a way, whether the law should sanction the emotion of romantic love between two people of the same sex. Adoption laws governing gay men raise the question of whether a father’s love is equal to that of a mother. 25 Overall, there is no scientific justification for the law’s view of men’s and women’s emotions. They are merely beliefs that come from an outdated view of human nature. The examples I’ve chosen represent only a small slice of the issue, both on the legal side and on the science side. I’ve barely scratched the surface of emotion stereotypes of ethnic groups, for example, who face similar struggles in and out of court. As long as the law codifies emotion stereotypes, people will continue to be the target of inconsistent rulings. 26 ... When Stefania Albertani pled guilty to drugging and killing her own sister, not to mention setting the corpse on fire, her defense team took a bold step and blamed her brain. Brain imaging revealed that two regions of Albertani’s cortex contained fewer neurons than a control group of ten other healthy women. The regions were the insula, which the defense claimed was associated with aggression, and the anterior cingulate gyrus, which allegedly was associated with lowering one’s inhibitions.

• From The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty (1983)

  She had hold of it, and it seemed to stretch her out, and the Prince moved back the stool on which he sat and appeared to make himself comfortable. He had ample room in which to swing the strap which he had made into a loop, and he was silent for a moment. Beauty cursed herself for ever admiring young Prince Alexi. Yet she was ashamed that his very name had formed in her mind, and when she felt the first hard smack of the belt on her thighs, she let out a frightened little cry but was glad of it. She deserved this, and she would never again make such a terrible mistake, no matter how beautiful or enticing were the slaves, and her boldness to look at them had been unforgivable. The wide heavy leather belt struck her with a loud, frightening sound, and the flesh of her thighs, more tender perhaps than her buttocks, even sore as they were, seemed to ignite under it. Her mouth was open, she could not keep herself quiet, and suddenly the Prince ordered her to lift her knees and march in place. "Quickly, quickly, yes, in rhythm!" he said angrily, and Beauty, astonished, struggled to obey, marching fast, her breasts moving with the effort, her heart pounding. "Higher, faster," the Prince commanded. She marched as he commanded, her feet slapping the stone floor, her knees coming up very high, her breasts a terrible aching weight as they swayed, and again came the belt smacking her and stinging her. The Prince seemed in a fury. The blows came faster and faster, as fast as she was moving her legs, and very soon, Beauty was writhing and struggling to get away from them. She was crying aloud unable to stop herself but the worst of it, the worst of it, was his anger. If only this were for his delight, if only he were pleased with her. She was crying and burying her face in her arm and the balls of her feet were burning, and her thighs felt swollen and blotched with pain as now again he took out his temper upon her buttocks. The smacks came so quickly, she had no sense of how many there were, only that it was a great deal more than he'd ever given her before, and it seemed he only grew more agitated, his left hand now thrusting her chin up and closing her mouth so she couldn't cry, all the while he commanded her to march faster and lift her legs higher. "You belong to me!" he said without ever stopping the loud spanking belt. "And you will learn to please me in all things, and you will never please me with your eyes upon the male slaves of my mother. Is this clear to you? Do you understand?"

• From The Annotated Lolita (1991)

  Love. DOLLY “The dumb child,” said Mrs. Humbert, “has left out a word before ‘time.’ That sweater was all-wool, and I wish you would not send her candy without consulting me.” 20 There was a woodlake (Hourglass Lake—not as I had thought it was spelled) a few miles from Ramsdale, and there was one week of great heat at the end of July when we drove there daily. I am now obliged to describe in some tedious detail our last swim there together, one tropical Tuesday morning. We had left the car in a parking area not far from the road and were making our way down a path cut through the pine forest to the lake, when Charlotte remarked that Jean Farlow, in quest of rare light effects (Jean belonged to the old school of painting), had seen Leslie taking a dip “in the ebony” (as John had quipped) at five o’clock in the morning last Sunday. “The water,” I said, “must have been quite cold.” “That is not the point,” said the logical doomed dear. “He is subnormal, you see. And,” she continued (in that carefully phrased way of hers that was beginning to tell on my health), “I have a very definite feeling our Louise is in love with that moron.” Feeling. “We feel Dolly is not doing as well” etc. (from an old school report). The Humberts walked on, sandaled and robed. “Do you know, Hum: I have one most ambitious dream,” pronounced Lady Hum, lowering her head—shy of that dream—and communing with the tawny ground. “I would love to get hold of a real trained servant maid like that German girl the Talbots spoke of; and have her live in the house.” “No room,” I said. “Come,” she said with her quizzical smile, “surely, chéri, you underestimate the possibilities of the Humbert home. We would put her in Lo’s room. I intended to make a guestroom of that hole anyway. It’s the coldest and meanest in the whole house.” “What are you talking about?” I asked, the skin of my cheekbones tensing up (this I take the trouble to note only because my daughter’s skin did the same when she felt that way: disbelief, disgust, irritation). “Are you bothered by Romantic Associations?” queried my wife—in allusion to her first surrender. “Hell no,” said I. “I just wonder where will you put your daughter when you get your guest or your maid.” “Ah,” said Mrs. Humbert, dreaming, smiling, drawing out the “Ah” simultaneously with the raise of one eyebrow and a soft exhalation of breath. “Little Lo, I’m afraid, does not enter the picture at all, at all. Little Lo goes straight from camp to a good boarding school with strict discipline and some sound religious training. And then—Beardsley College. I have it all mapped out, you need not worry.” She went on to say that she, Mrs.

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  And yet he could not leave her. Another man would take his place—an unbearable thought. She would invite him to spend the night in her bed, as long as he promised not to force himself on her; and then, as if to torture him beyond reason, she would get into bed naked (supposedly because of the heat). All this he put up with on the grounds that no other man had such privileges. But one night, pushed to the limits of frustration, he exploded with anger, and issued an ultimatum: either give me what I conscious \ Of rivals, of shared delights. Neglect \ These devices—his ardor will wane. A racehorse runs most strongly \ When the field's ahead, to be paced \ And passed. So the dying embers of passion can be fanned to \ Fresh flame by some outrage—I can only love, \ Myself, I confess it, when wronged. But don't let the cause of \ Pain be too obvious: let a lover suspect \ More than he knows. Invent a slave who watches your every \ Movement, make clear what a jealous martinet \ That man of yours is— such things will excite him. Pleasure \ Too safely enjoyed lacks zest. You want to be free \ As Thaïs? Act scared. Though the door's quite safe, let him in by \ The window. Look nervous. Have a smart \ Maid rush in, scream "We're caught!" while you bundle the quaking \ Youth out of sight. But be sure \ To offset his fright with some moments of carefree pleasure— \ Or he'll think a night with you isn't worth the risk. —OVID. THE ART OF LOVE, TRANSLATED BY PETER GREEN "Certainly," I said, "I have often told you that pain holds a peculiar attraction for me, and that nothing kindles my passion quite so much as tyranny cruelty and above all unfaithfulness in a beautiful woman." —LEOPOLD VON SACHER- MASOCH, VENUS IN FURS, TRANSLATED BY JEAN MCNEIL Mix Pleasure with Pain • 373 want or you will never see me again. Suddenly Conchita started to cry. He had never seen her cry, and it moved him. She too was tired of all this, she said, her voice trembling; if it was not too late, she was ready to accept the proposal she had once turned down. Set her up in a house, and he would see what a devoted mistress she would be. Don Mateo wasted no time. He bought her a villa, gave her plenty of money to decorate it. After eight days the house was ready. She would re- ceive him there at midnight. What joys awaited him. Don Mateo showed up at the appointed hour. The barred door to the courtyard was closed. He rang the bell. She came to the other side of the door. "Kiss my hands," she said through the bars.

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  This was where Brutus had stabbed the great general, he said; Cassius had stabbed him here. Then finally he read the will, which drops. \ Kind souls, what weep you when you but behold \ Our Caesar's vesture wounded? Look you here! \ Here is himself, marred as you see until traitors. —WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, JULIUS CAESAR Use the Demonic Power of Words to Sow Confusion • 261 told how much wealth Caesar had left to the Roman people. This was the coup de grace—the crowd turned against the conspirators and went off to lynch them. Antony was a clever man, who knew how to stir a crowd. According to the Greek historian Plutarch, "When he saw that his oratory had cast a spell over the people and that they were deeply stirred by his words, he began to introduce into his praises [of Caesar] a note of pity and of indignation at Caesar's fate." Seductive language aims at people's emotions, for emotional people are easier to deceive. Antony used various devices to stir the crowd: a tremor in his voice, a distraught and then an angry tone. An emotional voice has an immediate, contagious effect on the listener. Antony also teased the crowd with the will, holding off the reading of it to the end, knowing it would push people over the edge. Holding up the cloak, he made his imagery visceral. Perhaps you are not trying to whip a crowd into a frenzy; you just want to bring people over to your side. Choose your strategy and words carefully. You might think it is better to reason with people, explain your ideas. But it is hard for an audience to decide whether an argument is reasonable as they listen to you talk. They have to concentrate and listen closely, which requires great effort. People are easily distracted by other stimuli, and if they miss a part of your argument, they will feel confused, intellectually in- ferior, and vaguely insecure. It is more persuasive to appeal to people's hearts than their heads. Everyone shares emotions, and no one feels inferior to a speaker who stirs up their feelings. The crowd bonds together, every- one contagiously experiencing the same emotions. Antony talked of Cae- sar as if he and the listeners were experiencing the murder from Caesar's point of view. What could be more provocative? Use such changes of per- spective to make your listeners feel what you are saying. Orchestrate your effects. It is more effective to move from one emotion to another than to just hit one note. The contrast between Antony's affection for Caesar and his indignation at the murderers was much more powerful than if he had stayed with one feeling or the other. The emotions you are trying to arouse should be strong ones. Do not speak of friendship and disagreement; speak of love and hate.

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  He would stand outside their churches, and as the congregation dispersed, he would point to the preacher and say, "He repre- sents the white man's god; I represent the black man's god." The curious began to come to hear him preach at a Nation of Islam temple. He would ask them to look at the actual conditions of their lives: "When you get The Charismatic • 113 through looking at where you live, then . . . take a walk across Central Park," he would tell them. "Look at the white man's apartments. Look at his Wall Street!" His words were powerful, particularly coming from a minister. In 1957, a young Muslim in Harlem witnessed the beating of a drunken black man by several policemen. When the Muslim protested, the police pummeled him senseless and carted him off to jail. An angry crowd gathered outside the police station, ready to riot. Told that only Malcolm X could forestall violence, the police commissioner brought him in and told him to break up the mob. Malcolm refused. Speaking more temperately, the commissioner begged him to reconsider. Malcolm calmly set conditions for his cooperation: medical care for the beaten Muslim, and proper punishment for the police officers. The commissioner reluctantly agreed. Outside the station, Malcolm explained the agreement and the crowd dispersed. In Harlem and around the country, he was an overnight hero— finally a man who took action. Membership in his temple soared. Malcolm began to speak all over the United States. He never read from a text; looking out at the audience, he made eye contact, pointed his finger. His anger was obvious, not so much in his tone—he was always controlled and articulate—as in his fierce energy, the veins popping out on his neck. Many earlier black leaders had used cautious words, and had asked their fol- lowers to deal patiently and politely with their social lot, no matter how unfair. What a relief Malcolm was. He ridiculed the racists, he ridiculed the liberals, he ridiculed the president; no white person escaped his scorn. If whites were violent, Malcolm said, the language of violence should be spoken back to them, for it was the only language they understood. "Hos- tility is good!" he cried out. "It's been bottled up too long." In response to the growing popularity of the nonviolent leader Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm said, "Anybody can sit. An old woman can sit. A coward can sit. ... It takes a man to stand." Malcolm X had a bracing effect on many who felt the same anger he did but were frightened to express it. At his funeral—he was assassinated in 1965, at one of his speeches—the actor Ossie Davis delivered the eulogy before a large and emotional crowd: "Malcolm," he said, "was our own black shining prince."

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  Because the Beauty is always being looked at, she tends to be passive. Beneath her passivity, though, there often lies frustration: the Beauty would love to be more active and to actually do some chasing of her own. A little coquettishness can work well here: at some point in all your worshiping, you might go a little cold, inviting her to come after you. Train her to be more active and you will have an excellent victim. The only downside is that her many insecurities require constant attention and care. The Aging Baby. Some people refuse to grow up. Perhaps they are afraid of death or of growing old; perhaps they are passionately attached to the life they led as children. Disliking responsibility, they struggle to turn everything into play and recreation. In their twenties they can be charming, in their thirties interesting, but by the time they reach their forties they are beginning to wear thin. Contrary to what you might imagine, one Aging Baby does not want to be involved with another Aging Baby, even though the combination might seem to increase the chances for play and frivolity. The Aging Baby does not want competition, but an adult figure. If you desire to seduce this type, you must be prepared to be the responsible, staid one. That may be a The Seducer's Victims—The Eighteen Types • 157 strange way of seducing, but in this case it works. You should appear to like the Aging Baby's youthful spirit (it helps if you actually do), can engage with it, but you remain the indulgent adult. By being responsible you free the Baby to play. Act the loving adult to the hilt, never judging or criticiz- ing their behavior, and a strong attachment will form. Aging Babies can be amusing for a while, but, like all children, they are often potently narcissis- tic. This limits the pleasure you can have with them. You should see them as short-term amusements or temporary outlets for your frustrated parental instincts. The Rescuer. We are often drawn to people who seem vulnerable or weak—their sadness or depression can actually be quite seductive. There are people, however, who take this much further, who seem to be attracted only to people with problems. This may seem noble, but Rescuers usually have complicated motives: they often have sensitive natures and truly want to help. At the same time, solving people's problems gives them a kind of power they relish—it makes them feel superior and in control. It is also the perfect way to distract them from their own problems. You will recognize these types by their empathy—they listen well and try to get you to open up and talk. You will also notice they have histories of relationships with dependent and troubled people.

• From My Year of Rest and Relaxation (2018)

  Reva had taken my pills, of course. I had no doubt. All she’d had left for me was a single dose of Benadryl in the foil blister, a one-inch square containing two measly antihistamines. I picked it up in disbelief and shut the door to the cabinet. My face in the mirror startled me. I leaned in and looked to see if it had shifted anymore since Dr. Tuttle’s weird assessment. I did look different. I couldn’t put my finger on how, but there was something that hadn’t been there before. What was it? Had I entered the new dimension? Ridiculous. I opened the cabinet again. The pills had not magically reappeared. I’d never known Reva to be so bold. Maybe I’d tried to hide the pills from myself, I thought. I started opening drawers and cabinets in the hallway, in the kitchen. I hoisted myself up and stood on the counter, looking into the back reaches of the shelves. There was nothing there. I looked in the bedroom, in the drawer of my bedside table, under my bed. I pulled everything out of the closet, found nothing, and piled everything back in. I sifted through my drawers. I went back into the living room and unzipped the cases of the sofa cushions. Maybe I’d stuffed the pills inside the frame, I thought. But why would I do that? I found my phone charging in the bedroom and called Reva. She didn’t answer. “Reva,” I said into her voice mail. She was a coward, I thought. She was an idiot. “Are you a medical doctor? Are you some kind of expert? If my shit isn’t back in that medicine cabinet by tonight, we are done. Our friendship is over. I will never want to see you again. That is, if I’m even alive. Did it occur to you that you might not know the whole story behind my condition? And that there would be harmful consequences if I just all of a sudden stopped taking my medicine? If I don’t take it, I could go into seizures, Reva. Aneurysms. Neurotic shock. OK? Total cellular collapse! You’d feel pretty sorry if I died because of you. I don’t know how you’d live with yourself then. How much puke and StairMaster would it take to get over something like that, huh? You know that killing someone you love is the ultimate self-destructive act. Grow up, Reva. Is this a cry for help? It’s pretty fucking pathetic, if it is. Anyway, call me back. I’m waiting. And honestly, I don’t feel very well.” I took the two Benadryl, sat back down on the sofa and turned on the television. “In a sweeping vote of one hundred to zero, the Senate has confirmed Mitch Daniels as director of the White House Office of Management and Budget for the freshly minted Bush administration. Fifty-one-year-old Daniels has been a senior vice president for Eli Lilly and Company, the Indianapolis-based pharmaceutical giant.” I turned the channel.

• From How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain (2017)

  Eventually, the word “angry” invited my daughter to search for a way in which these instances were the same, even if on the surface they looked and felt different. In effect, Sophia formed a rudimentary concept whose instances were characterized by a common goal: overcoming an obstacle. And most importantly, Sophia learned which actions and feelings most effectively achieved this goal in each situation. In this way, Sophia’s brain would have bootstrapped the concept “Anger” into its neural architecture. When we first used the word “angry” with Sophia, we constructed her experiences of anger with her. We focused her attention, guiding her brain to store each instance in all its sensory detail. The word helped her to create commonalities with all the other instances of “Anger” already in her brain. Her brain also captured what preceded and followed those experiences. All of this became her concept of “Anger.” 3 5 In our earlier encounter with Connecticut Governor Malloy, I described how viewers inferred his emotional state—intense sadness—by observing his movements and voice in a certain context. I think children learn to do the same thing. As they learn a concept such as “Anger,” they can predict and give meaning to other people’s movements and vocalizations—smiles, shrugs, shouts, whispers, tightened jaws, widened eyes, even motionlessness—as well as their own bodily sensations, to construct perceptions of anger. Or, they can focus on predicting and giving meaning to their own interoceptive sensations, along with sensations from the world, to construct an emotional experience. As Sophia grew older, she extended her concept of “Anger” to people who slam doors, adding to her population of instances. And when she encountered a sneezing person and said, “Mama, that man is angry,” and I corrected her, she honed her concept of “Anger” yet again. Her brain gave sensations meaning, using concepts that fit the situation, to construct an instance of emotion.

• From The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) (2)

  led the young man to his chamber, and closed his wife in another chamber, whereby he might revenge his enemy at his pleasure. On the next morrow when the sun’s rays did first usher in the day, he called two of the most sturdiest ser- vants of his house, who hoist up the young man while he scourged his buttocks well-favouredly with rods like a child. When he had well beaten him he said: * Art thou not ashamed, thou that art so tender and delicate a boy, to refuse the lovers of thine own budding age, and to desire the violation of honest marriages, and defame thyself with wicked living, whereby thou hast gotten the name of an adul- Lerer?" And so he whipped him again and chased him out of his house: the young man, the bravest ot all adulterers, ran away, despairing of his life, and did nothing else, save only bewail his striped and aching buttocks. Soon after the baker sent one to his wife who divorced her away in his name: but she, beside her own natural mischief (offended at this contumely, though she had worthily deserved the same) had recourse to wicked arts and trumpery ! that women use, never ceasing till she had found out an en- chantress, who (as it was thought) could do what she would with her sorcery and conjuration. The baker’s wife began to entreat her, promising that she would largely recompense her, if she could bring one of these two things to pass, either to make that her husband might be reconciled to her again, or else, if he would not agree thereto, to send some ghost or devil into him to dispossess the spirit of her husband. witches, when they have lost silver spoons, or have their cattle hurt to seek remedy, but to seek redress by such means is lack of faith, when they forsake God and run for help to the devil, with whom, as S. Augustine sayeth, they shall be damned,” 445 LUCIUS APULEIUS saga illa et divini potens primis adhuc armis faci- norosae disciplinae suae velitatur et vehementer offensum mariti flectere atque in amorem impellere conatur animum. Quae res cum ei sequius ac rata fuerat proveniret, indignata numinibus, et praeter praemii destinatum compendium contemptione etiam stimulata, ipsi iam miserrimi mariti incipit imminere capiti, umbramque violenter peremptae mulieris ad exitium eius instigare.

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  She had met him before, and knew his reputation as a moral absolutist, but this was to be a ceremony, an exchange of pleasantries. Gladstone, however, had no pa- tience for such things. At that first meeting he explained to the queen his theory of royalty: the queen, he believed, had to play an exemplary role in England—a role she had lately failed to live up to, for she was overly private. This lecture set a bad tone for the future, and things only got worse: soon Victoria was receiving letters from Gladstone, addressing the subject in even greater depth. Half of them she never bothered to read, and soon she was doing everything she could to avoid contact with the leader of her government; if she had to see him, she made the meeting as brief as possi- ble. To that end, she never allowed him to sit down in her presence, hoping that a man his age would soon tire and leave. For once he got going on a subject dear to his heart, he did not notice your look of disinterest or the tears in your eyes from yawning. His memoranda on even the simplest of issues would have to be translated into plain English for her by a member of her staff. Worst of all, Gladstone argued with her, and his arguments had a way of making her feel stupid. She soon learned to nod her head and ap- pear to agree with whatever abstract point he was trying to make. In a let- ter to her secretary, referring to herself in the third person, she wrote, "She always felt in [Gladstone's] manner an overbearing obstinacy and imperi- ousness . . . which she never experienced from anyone else, and which she found most disagreeable." Over the years, these feelings hardened into an unwaning hatred. As the head of the Liberal Party, Gladstone had a nemesis, Benjamin Disraeli, the head of the Conservative Party. He considered Disraeli amoral, a devilish Jew. At one session of Parliament, Gladstone tore into his rival, scoring point after point as he described where his opponents policies would lead. Growing angry as he spoke (as usually happened when he talked of Disraeli), he pounded the speaker's table with such force that pens and papers went flying. Through all of this Disraeli seemed half-asleep. When Gladstone had finished, he opened his eyes, rose to his feet, and calmly walked up to the table. "The right honorable gentleman," he said, "has spoken with much passion, much eloquence, and much—ahem— violence." Then, after a drawn-out pause, he continued, "But the damage can be repaired"—and he proceeded to gather up everything that had fallen 144 • The Art of Seduction from the table and put them back in place.

• From The Art of Seduction (2001)

  A subvariant of the Suffocator is the Doormat, a person who slavishly bad character, and general wickedness; also any affair imitates you. Spot these types early on by seeing whether they are capable with another woman, even of having an idea of their own. An inability to disagree with you is a bad if it involves no feelings of sign. love. Love is also diminished if a woman realizes that her lover is foolish and undiscerning, or The Moralizer. Seduction is a game, and should be undertaken with a if she sees him going too far in demands of love, giving light heart. All is fair in love and seduction; morality never enters the pic-no thought to his partner's ture. The character of the Moralizer, however, is rigid. These are people modesty nor wishing to who follow fixed ideas and try to make you bend to their standards. They pardon her blushes. A want to change you, to make you a better person, so they endlessly criticize faithful lover ought to choose the harshest pains of and judge—that is their pleasure in life. In truth, their moral ideas stem love rather than by his from their own unhappiness, and mask their desire to dominate those demands cause his partner around them. Their inability to adapt and to enjoy makes them easy to rec-embarrassment, or take pleasure in spurning her ognize; their mental rigidity may also be accompanied by a physical stiff-modesty; for one who ness. It is hard not to take their criticisms personally so it is better to avoid thinks only of the outcome their presence and their poisoned comments. of his own pleasure, and ignores the welfare of his partner, should be called a traitor rather than a lover. • The Tightwad. Cheapness signals more than a problem with money. It is a Love also suffers decrease if sign of something constricted in a person's character—something that the woman realizes that her lover is fearful in war, keeps them from letting go or taking a risk. It is the most anti-seductive The Anti-Seducer • 135 trait of all, and you cannot allow yourself to give in to it. Most tightwads or sees that he has no do not realize they have a problem; they actually imagine that when they patience, or is stained with the vice of pride. There is give someone some paltry crumb, they are being generous. Take a hard nothing which appears look at yourself—you are probably cheaper than you think. Try giving more appropriate to the more freely of both your money and yourself and you will see the seduc- character of any lover than tive potential in selective generosity. Of course you must keep your gener- to be clad in the adornment of humility, utterly osity under control. Giving too much can be a sign of desperation, as if untouched by the you were trying to buy someone. nakedness of pride. • Then too the prolixity of a fool or a madman often

• From Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture (2018)

  Of course Daddy denied it; I expected that. I didn’t expect Mommy to believe him, and she didn’t. So after Daddy finally confessed, I assumed Mommy would throw him out; all along, I had thought that Mommy stayed with Daddy because he was sick and she felt sorry for him. But she didn’t make him leave. It was her house, she paid the bills, and she worked. He didn’t. Why did she still care for him and let him stay, after what he’d done to their daughter? I was so filled with rage; I couldn’t understand her pain and I didn’t understand her choices. How could she, after all this, love us both equally, maybe even love him a little more than she did me? Even though he raped me, it was treated as something we were both guilty of; I just refused to wear my half of the shame. My father attended our church sporadically. His health was always an excuse for absence while his photography afforded him plenty of opportunities to be seen at his best. Our pastor, reverends, and deacons all held him in high regard, so when my mother sought advice from our church, it was treated much in the way as the counselor had. No one could believe it. They left us to deal with the matter the best way we knew how, on our own. A counselor coworker of Daddy’s warned my mom that she should let him stay because if my father were forced to leave, the overall damage to our family could be irreversible. I thought it very ironic, given all the times my father was unemployed, that it was an associate of his who came to our aid. As a counselor, he volunteered his services to the family as a favor to my father. This doctor, like most of the people my father was in contact with, believed him to be a good and decent man. “Your father told me what happened, Tracey,” the counselor said as I sat on the edge of the chair in his hospital office two weeks later. “Do you think you can forgive him?” he asked. My parents sat on the couch on the other side of the room, my mother on one side, gripping her purse, and my father quietly on the other, his head down and his eyes up. It was the second time in two weeks that I’d been asked to forgive something I was struggling to comprehend on the most basic level. (Daddy had also asked me for my forgiveness, after he stopped denying to my mother that he’d raped me.) The psychiatrist paused expectantly, as though I’d missed my cue. “I’ll try,” I said. “Good, good, good, Tracey,” he said. “My name is Sharisse,” I said. “Only Daddy calls me Tracey.”

• From Fear of Flying (1973)

  Phallocentric. The trouble with men and also the trouble with women. A friend of mine recently found this in a fortune cookie: the trouble with men is men, the trouble with women, men . Once, just to impress Bennett, I told him about the Hell’s Angels initiation ceremony. The part where the initiate has to go down on his woman while she has her period and while all the other guys watch. Bennett said nothing. “Well, isn’t that interesting?” I nudged. “Isn’t that a gas?” Still nothing. I kept nagging. “Why don’t you buy yourself a little dog,” he finally said, “and train him.” “I ought to report you to the New York Psychoanalytic,” I said. — The medical building of the University of Vienna is columned, cold, cavernous. We trudged up a long flight of steps. Upstairs, dozens of shrinks were milling around the registration desk. An officious Austrian girl in harlequin glasses and a red dirndl was giving everyone trouble about their credentials for registration. She spoke painstakingly schoolbook English. I was positive she must be the wife of one of the Austrian candidates. She couldn’t have been more than twenty-five but she smiled with all the smugness of a Frau Doktor. I showed her my letter from Voyeur Magazine, but she wouldn’t let me register. “Why?” “Because we are not authorized to admit Press,” she sneered. “I am so sorry.” “I’ll bet.” I could feel the anger gather inside my head like steam in a pressure cooker. The Nazi bitch, I thought, the goddamned Kraut. Bennett shot me a look which said: calm down. He hates it when I get angry at people in public. But his trying to hold me back only made me more furious. “Look—if you don’t let me in I’ll write about that , too.” I knew that once the meetings got started I could probably walk right in without a badge—so it really didn’t matter. Besides, I scarcely cared all that much about writing the article. I was a spy from the outside world. A spy in the house of analysis. “I’m sure you don’t want me to write about how the analysts are scared of admitting writers to their meetings, do you?” “I’m zo sorry,” the Austrian bitch kept repeating. “But I really haff not got za ausority to admit you….” “Just following orders, I suppose.” “I haff instructions to obey,” she said. “You and Eichmann.” “Pardon?” She hadn’t heard me. Somebody else had. I turned around and saw this blond, shaggy-haired Englishman with a pipe hanging out of his face. “If you’d stop being paranoid for a minute and use charm instead of main force, I’m sure nobody could resist you,” he said.