5. Vampirism-a

THE alleged Vampire has always been a popular character in tales of mystery and imagination. There is a considerable literature concerning his doings, from the famous novel Dracula to serious studies of the medieval witch-trials, for which the reader is referred to the bibliography at the end of the book. In these pages, however, I do not want to avail myself of second-hand evidence, nor of incidents which took place in other centuries and under primitive conditions, for it might be argued that with the passing of such conditions from our midst, the problem of vampirism, like the problem of typhus, has gone too, and need not trouble us. From my own experience I am of the opinion, however, that this is not so, and that the peculiar condition which the ancients called vampirism may account for certain forms of mental disturbance and the physical ill-health associated therewith. When psycho-analysis was first introduced into England I took up the subject, and became a student, and eventually a lecturer at a clinic that was founded in London. We students were soon struck by the fact that some cases were exceedingly exhausting to deal with. It was not that they were troublesome, but simply that they “took it out” of us, and left us feeling like limp rags at the end of a treatment. Someone happened to mention this fact to one of the nurses engaged in the electrical department, and she told us that the same patients equally “took it out of” the electrical machines and that they could absorb the most surprising voltages without turning a hair. At the same place, in the course of my psycho-analytical work, I came across a number of cases where a morbid attachment existed between two people, most commonly mother and daughter, or two women friends; sometimes also between mother and son, and in one case I met socially, between a man and a woman. It was always the negative one of the pair who came for treatment, and we were able to benefit them considerably by psycho-therapeutic means. They always showed the same symptom-complex, a sensitive temperament, pallid complexion, wasted form and general debility, sense of weakness, and easy fatiguabilty. They were also invariably highly suggestible, and were therefore easy to handle. Consequently we were usually able to get good results pretty quickly in such cases. The curious point, however, was that the breaking of the morbid rapport caused a marked disturbance and even semi-collapse of the dominant partner in the alliance. We found it necessary to insist upon a separation if a cure were to be effected, and the separation invariably disagreed very actively with the dominant partner. At that time I explained everything in terms of the Freudian psychology, but even so, I could not help being struck by the curious effect a separation had upon the person who was not supposed to be ill, and that as the one went uphill, the other went down. I am of the opinion that what Freud calls an Oedipus complex is not altogether a one-sided affair, and that the “soul” of the parent is drawing upon the psychic vitality of the child. It is curious how aged Oedipus cases always look, and what little old men and women they are as children. They never have a normal childhood, but always are mentally mature for their years. I persuaded various patients to show me photographs of themselves as children, and was much struck by the elderly, worried expression of the childish faces, as if they had known all of life’s problems and burdens. Knowing what we do of telepathy and the magnetic aura, it appears to me not unreasonable to suppose that in some way which we do not as yet fully understand, the negative partner of such a rapport is “shorting” on to the positive partner. There is a leakage of vitality going on, and the dominant partner is more or less consciously lapping it up, if not actually sucking it out.