| Vampirism | |
|---|---|
| Other names | Renfield's syndrome, Renfield syndrome |
| Specialty | Psychiatry |
Clinical vampirism, more commonly known as Renfield's syndrome, is an obsession with drinking blood. 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, over 50,000 people addicted to drinking blood have appeared in the psychiatric literature from 1892 to 2010.[vague] This was documented in the work of Austrian forensic psychiatrist Richard 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 term Renfield's syndrome with the intent to parody what he viewed as 1980s psychobabble, before the joke was taken seriously in popular culture.[5][6] The original term clinical vampirism was seen as a suitable subject for satire due to its doubtful utility, and has effectively been completely replaced.
The syndrome is named after R. M. Renfield, Dracula's human zoophagous follower in the 1897 novel by Bram Stoker. In a web interview with psychology professor Katherine 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 of Renfield'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 of clinical vampirism was somewhat different from Renfield'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. Neither clinical vampirism nor Renfield's syndrome have ever been listed as a valid diagnosis in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM).
According to the case history reports in the older psychiatric literature, the condition starts with a key event in childhood that causes the experience of a blood injury or the ingestion of blood to be exciting. After puberty, the excitement is experienced as sexual arousal. Throughout adolescence and adulthood, blood, its presence, and its consumption can also stimulate a sense of power and control. Noll speculated that his Renfield's syndrome began with autovampirism 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 of clinical vampirism or Renfield's syndrome describe the case using official psychiatric diagnostic categories listed in the DSM.
Clinical vampirism has been referred to as Renfield'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 psychologist Leonard George summarized Renfield's syndrome.[12][13]
Characters with Renfield's Syndrome have appeared on television.
In addition to references to Renfield'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 as schizophrenia or paraphilia.[20] A case of vampirism in Turkey reported in 2012 was discussed as a behavior of a patient diagnosed with dissociative identity disorder and post-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 killers Peter Kürten and Richard Trenton Chase were both called "vampires" in the tabloids after they were discovered drinking the blood of the people they murdered. Similarly, in 1932, an unsolved murder case in Stockholm, 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]