| Vampirism | |
|---|---|
| Other names | Renfield's syndrome, Renfield syndrome |
| Specialty | Psychiatry |
Clinical vampirism, more commonly known asRenfield's syndrome, is an obsession with drinkingblood. The earliest presentation of clinical vampirism in psychiatric literature was a psychoanalytic interpretation of two cases, contributed by Richard L. Vanden Bergh and John. F. Kelley.[1] As the authors point out, brief and sporadic reports of blood-drinking behaviors associated with sexual pleasure have appeared in the psychiatric literature at least since 1892 with the work of Austrian forensic psychiatristRichard von Krafft-Ebing. Many medical publications concerning clinical vampirism can be found in the literature of forensic psychiatry, with the behavior being reported as an aspect of extraordinary violent crimes.[2][3][4]
Richard Noll created the termRenfield's syndrome with the intent to parody what he viewed as 1980spsychobabble, before the joke was taken seriously in popular culture.[5][6] The original termclinical vampirism was seen as a suitable subject for satire due to its doubtful utility, and has effectively been completely replaced.
The syndrome is named afterR. M. Renfield,Dracula's human zoophagous follower in the1897 novel byBram Stoker. In a web interview with psychology professorKatherine Ramsland, Noll explained how he invented the term and its purported diagnostic criteria as a whimsical parody of 1980's psychiatry and "new DSM-speak".[6] In a public lecture hosted by Penn State University's Institute for the Arts and Humanities on 7 October 2013, Noll traced the 20-year trajectory of his unintentionally created "monster" from the moment of its creation to the cultural popularity ofRenfield's syndrome today.[7][8] However, some writers have pointed out that it does serve as a useful demonstration of how creating unfounded names for psychological illnesses can have negative consequences.[9][10]
The prior diagnosis ofclinical vampirism was somewhat different fromRenfield's syndrome.Clinical vampirism usually connoted an erotic obsession with blood;Renfield's syndrome more resembles an eating disorder involving the consumption of blood and/or living animals. Neitherclinical vampirism norRenfield's syndrome have ever been listed as a valid diagnosis in theDiagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM).
According to the case history reports in older psychiatric literature, the condition starts with a key event inchildhood that causes the experience of a blood injury or the ingestion of blood to be exciting. Afterpuberty, the excitement is experienced assexual arousal. Throughoutadolescence andadulthood, blood, its presence, and its consumption can also stimulate a sense of power and control. Noll speculated that hisRenfield's syndrome began withautovampirism and then progressed to the consumption of the blood of other creatures.[11]
Very few cases of the syndrome have been described. Published reports that have been proposed as examples ofclinical vampirism orRenfield's syndrome describe the case using official psychiatric diagnostic categories listed in the DSM.
Clinical vampirism has been referred to asRenfield's syndrome in academic literature since it was adopted in popular culture. The 20-year evolution of a 3-page book section that spread through mass media and then into pages of a peer-reviewed scholarly journal should serve as a cautionary tale about the purported validity of other, similar syndromes.[9][10]
Philosopher of science Ian Hacking refers to this process as "making up people" and critiques medical and psychiatric elites for the untoward effects of their "dynamic nominalism" on individual lives. Such arbitrary categories create new natural "kinds" of people (e.g., perverts, multiple personalities and so on) that serve larger political, cultural and moral purposes and change with historical contingencies.[9][10]
In an NBC pre-Halloween special hosted by actor Peter Graves entitled "The Unexplained: Witches, Werewolves and Vampires" that aired on 23 October 1994, pages from Noll's book were shown on camera as Canadian psychologistLeonard George summarized Renfield's syndrome.[12][13]
Characters with Renfield's Syndrome have appeared on television.
In addition to references toRenfield's syndrome in psychiatric literature and mass media, it has also appeared in popular literature.
Very few cases of the syndrome have been described, and the published reports that do exist describe clinical vampirism as behaviors that are subsumed under more conventional psychiatric diagnostic categories such asschizophrenia orparaphilia.[20] A case of vampirism in Turkey reported in 2012 was discussed as a behavior of a patient diagnosed withdissociative identity disorder andpost-traumatic stress disorder.[21] While not referencing the literature on Renfield's syndrome, two Irish psychiatrists surveyed the psychiatric literature on vampirism as evidence of a changing discourse in psychiatry from the narrative of case studies to the depersonalized discourse of checklist diagnostic criteria.[22]
A number of murderers have performed seemingly vampiric rituals upon their victims.Serial killersPeter Kürten andRichard Trenton Chase were both called "vampires" in thetabloids after they were discovered drinking the blood of the people they murdered. Similarly, in 1932, an unsolved murder case inStockholm, Sweden, was nicknamed the "Vampire murder", due to the circumstances of the victim's death.[23] Clinical vampirism in the context of criminal acts of violence, as well as "consensual" vampirism as a social ritual, have been extensively documented in the many works of Katharine Ramsland.[24][25] Others have commented upon the psychiatric implications of "vampire cults" among adolescents.[26]