Deep down, everyone wants to be important. Psychoanalysts have studied our base desires for centuries and the 2 primary human needs are these:

  1. The need to reproduce sexually
  2. The need to be important

Human need 1 is well-known; however, as we evolve to be more complex, the sex urge becomes less of a driving force in our individual lives. You can see this everywhere as more people are deciding not to have children.

However, these people still have sex.

Here’s where human need 2, the need to be important, comes into play. Most of you already know how to build value (through DHVs, for instance), but do you know the foundation of that value? It all has to do with being important. Well, duh.

Dale Carnegie says this about being important:

"The desire for a feeling of importance is one of the chief distinguishing differences between mankind and the animals. This desire makes you want to wear the latest styles, drive the latest cars, and talk about your brilliant children."

While Carnegie is essentially telling you how Importance is employed in marketing (mostly), it should be easy to see how this applies to our social relationships. Meet the Object Cause of Desire.

The Object Cause of Desire has been described as "the object at the centre of psychic economy," and it might be the driving force for all importance. There are a lot of heady and in-depth definitions of this idea, but I like to explain it this way:

The Object Cause of Desire is an opportunity for you to become important to someone.

Maslow’s hierarchy of needs

According to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, we all yearn for self-actualization. I.e., reaching our potential. This takes the form of the world accepting something we’ve created and changing in a way we want it to. For an actor, that might be winning an Oscar and becoming a super star. For an entrepreneur, that may be creating a startup that changes how we use taxis (Uber) and becoming a billionaire.

At its core, no matter who you are, the concept of self-actualization relies on creation and creativity. This is where the Object Cause of Desire comes in: people desire imperfection because they see room to create in imperfection. That room for creation drives importance. E.g., if you can help someone be better than they are, you become important to them. If someone was perfect, they would need no help, and therefore you could not be important to them.

So to truly love someone, you must be able to self-actualize within them, and you cannot do that if someone is perfect. Even having a tiny imperfection makes you more attractive, in the long run, than someone perfect.

What does this mean for Seduction? You will have to find your own meaning. I hope this psychological concept helps you in your DHVs and seduction.

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This is just a quick dive into a deep topic. If you want to know more about Object Cause of Desire, you can follow the sources below. The point of this post isn’t to be a convincing dissertation, rather to introduce a topic and explain it sufficiently enough to help you know it exists. Please let me know if you have any corrections!

If you live in Houston, I am part of a seduction/self-improvement group that goes out. DM me if interested.

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