In 1892, the forensic psychiatrist Richard von Krafft-Ebing commented in his Psychopathia Sexualis on several cases of men sexually obsessed with drinking blood, such as that of a 24-year-old vintner who murdered a twelve-year-old girl in the woods, mutilated her genitals, he ate part of his heart, drank his blood, and buried his remains. Or the man who cut off his wife’s arm to suck her blood because she aroused a strong sexual desire in him.
But the first formal presentation of clinical vampirism was made by psychoanalysts Richard L. Vanden Bergh and John F. Kelley in 1964 with an interpretation à la Freud: “The popularity of the vampiric figure evidences Freud’s notion that there is an inherent primary masochism This erotic drive is primitive in nature and appears non-Oedipal.”
Although there have only been extremely rare cases of bloodsucking in the context of sexual violence and murder, that is all it has taken for some psychiatrists to lump them under the term “clinical vampirism.” In 1984, Herschel Prins, a social worker, surveyed “forensic psychiatrists or psychiatrists with a particular interest in this serious deviation” and concluded that vampirism was a clinical condition most associated with “schizophrenic disorders, hysteria, severe psychopathic disorder, and mental retardation.” mind ”.
A less harsh view of this alleged disorder we owe to psychologist Richard Noll, who in 1990 was an author known for his book Bizarre Diseases of the Mind. One day that year, writing the introduction to his next book Vampires, Werewolves, and Demons: Twentieth Century Reports in the Psychiatric Literature , he decided to half-jokingly, half-seriously suggest that clinical vampirism should be renamed Renfield Syndrome, the character from Stoker’s novel that he lived locked up in an insane asylum and ate spiders and flies to absorb his life force. Mentally controlled by Dracula, his life ends when he falls in love with Mina Harker and confronts the vampire. “I remember laughing when I thought about how I could do a mental disorder pastiche centered around our good friend Renfield,” Noll said in an interview.
Noll noted that Renfield syndrome was characterized by a “blood-drinking compulsion” that “almost always has a strong sexual component associated with it.” Noll stated that those with Renfield syndrome go through a situation at puberty that involves the ingestion of blood. ” At puberty it merges with sexual fantasies and autovampirism appears, that is, it begins to drink its own blood.” Then they go on to drink the blood of animals (zoophagy) and, finally, that of living human beings (vampirism) .
Of course he himself did not take it seriously, but others did. The Journal of the History of the Neurosciences published in 2011 an article by Regis Olry and Duane E. Haines, “The Renfield Syndrome: A Psychiatric Illness Straight Out of Bram Stoker’s Dracula.” When reading the article, Noll said: “I am between amused and horrified by the monster I created on a whim. At this rate, it may very well end up in the DSM-VI (the North American psychiatric reference manual)!” Those authors wrote very seriously that its “etiology remains unknown”.
In a similar vein, since the end of the last century the medical literature has begun to include articles on ” the cult of vampires” . In 2010 researchers Megan White and Hatim Omar reported that the contemporary vampire subculture includes individuals claiming to be ‘vampires’ who behave as expected, including going out only at night, sleeping in coffins, donning fangs, and even sharing blood. White and Omar included in their article the case of a 15-year-old boy who claimed to be “addicted to blood” and engaged in autovampirism.
But make no mistake, the “vampire community” is not limited to teenagers . In the United States, some 15,000 people claim to be ‘real vampires’, and it is not about those who live strictly fulfilling what is expected of a fictional vampire. According to the Atlanta Vampire Alliance , one of the largest vampire organizations in the US, “ a vampire is essentially someone who feeds on the life energy or blood of another being, often human… vampires are individuals incapable of maintain their physical, mental, or spiritual well-being without feeding like this…if they don’t, the vampire will become lethargic, sickly, depressed, and often suffer physically and psychically.” The group’s co-founder, a man who calls himself Merticus and who identified himself as a true vampire in 1997, has conducted two studies funded by Suscitatio Enterprises, a company dedicated to investigating the “real vampire” phenomenon.
After conducting surveys of 950 vampires from around the world, Merticus obtained the following results: they are adults, Caucasian (72%), heterosexual (55%), and claim to have an above-average IQ. Although we should say vampires, because contrary to what the medical literature on vampirism says, “real vampires” are more women (63%) than men (35%). Continuing with the surprises, only 35% identify as goths and 24% belong to an organized vampire group. Based on their food source, 52% of “true vampires” profess to be ‘ bloody’ (that is, they drink blood) and 68% identify as ‘psychic vampires’, claiming to take the psychic energy of others either by touch or by non-physical means. Finally, 40% identify themselves as hybrids , which do both.
Are they crazy or do they suffer from some mental illness? It seems not. Only 31% are depressive, 16% suffer from bipolar disorder and another 16% reported panic disorder. In reality, the vast majority have never seen a psychiatrist, nor do they have any drug or alcohol addiction, nor have a history of sexual abuse, nor have they been convicted of violent crimes. They are people like us except for one insignificant detail: they think they are vampires.
Interestingly, quite a few of them would like a scientific (non-psychiatric) explanation to be found for why they feel this way. Real vampires say they were born that way, they didn’t choose their identity. They consume small amounts of human blood, sometimes making small incisions in the upper chest of a willing donor, often as part of a long-term relationship. “The consumption of blood from human sources is facilitated through a consensual agreement by verbal or written contract between a vampire and a donor,” explains Merticus. If he does not have access to a donor, the vampire can use other foods as blood substitutes: raw meat, chocolate, red wine, milk, and foods high in sugar.
