The Human Vampire
A Psychoanalytical Perspective

When Bram Stoker's Dracula was published in 1897, the controversial fiction triggered a panic in the Western culture (Wolf vii). Images of animalistic sex, seduction, manipulation, taboo, sadism, and supernatural powers spilled from Stoker's mind onto paper and into the heads of his audience. This was all new and provocative to the fictional world, but to what extent did it compare to the real-life events of that time? Only nine years prior to the publication of Dracula, between the months of August and November of 1888, five brutal murders were committed at the East end of London (Wilson and Wilson 8). Much like the modern vampire described psychoanalytically by psychologists, Louis Franzini and John Grossberg, in their book Eccentric and Bizarre Behaviors, these killings represented a "regression to a primitive, animalistic level of personality functioning" (75). However, this vampire-beast dubbed "Jack the Ripper," who was responsible for the Whitechapel murders, did not hide from the sun, nor did he sleep in coffins during the day, change into bats, have mesmerizing powers inescapable by human prey. He did not flinch from the glare of a cross, begin melting from the touch of holy water, nor did he wither away when exposed to fresh garlic. On the contrary, this vampire-like offender sucked the life out of five young women, murdered their bodies and deprived them of their souls in a compulsive and animalistic manner, each at different times with little or no remorse. This vampire was human. In modern times, such a human vampire has been referred to as the "serial killer" (Wilson and Wilson 1). Similar to the nature of the modern vampire, the behaviorisms of the serial killer interrelate with Sigmund Freud's theory on civilization versus nature, discussing the struggle between man's duty to his people and man's duty to himself.

In Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, Freud introduces the powerful rival emotions of love and hate. "The true prototypes of the relation of hate are derived not from sexual life, but from the ego's struggle to preserve and maintain itself" (qtd. in Fromm 489). Hate, Freud explains, is older than love because hate's main priority is to preserve the self and to defend the ego from the external world, in fear that harm may come and, thus, threaten the ego's existence. Love, on the other hand, is younger, due to the fact that love is an act of sharing the ego with the external world. One must gain stability and defend oneself before one can trust the environment (Fromm 488). This theory of hate can explain the behavior of serial murderer, Richard Trenton Chase, also known as the "Sacramento Vampire" (Franzini and Grossberg 71). In 1978, the FBI was called in to investigate a "particular gory homicide" (72). A truck driver had found his pregnant wife disemboweled, mutilated, and dead in their Sacramento home. There was evidence of her blood being collected and consumed at the scene. Shortly after the first murder, another four murders of the same nature were committed. After a young woman contacted authorities informing them of a terrifying encounter with a past high school classmate, the suspect, Richard Chase, was apprehended (73). Clearly being the perpetrator of these heinous slayings, Chase's frantic defense was that his blood was turning into dust, therefore he felt the urge to drink other people's blood to replenish his own blood supply and keep himself from dying (74). From a Freudian perspective, Chase committed these crimes with the emotion of hate and the goal of self-preservation. He could not fathom loving others in his surrounding when his very existence was jeopardized. This case closely relates to the nature of the vampire. It is by their nature that in order to survive, vampires must consume human blood.

"For the principal task of civilization, its actual raison d'etre [reason to be], is to defend us against nature" (Freud 19). In The Future of An Illusion, Freud describes civilization as man's solution of living safely in an organizational manner with others. However, Freud emphasizes the necessity to sacrifice a few human instinctual drives in order to achieve "civilization," and to avoid chaos and genocide.

Among these instinctual wishes are those of incest, cannibalism and lust for killing...Cannibalism alone seems to be universally proscribed and - to the non- psycho-analytic view - to have been completely surmounted. The strength of the incestuous wishes can still be detected behind the prohibition against them; and under certain conditions killing is still practised, and indeed commanded, by our civilization. (13).

Nature has become outlawed; our selfish instinctual motives of the id (the unconscious) have been suppressed because the failure of restraining them will not only cause a mere disruption in civilization, but quite possibly the apocalypse. Freud admonishes us of the existence of these instinctual motives (cannibalism, incestuous wishes, and lust for killing), reminding us that there are hints of them lurking within us in our laws and taboos. He also warns us of the "class of people, the neurotics, who already react to these frustrations with asocial behavior" (13). This "class of people" would include such infamous historic figures as Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, James Jones, Charles Manson, and David Koresh. These people, encouraging instinctual drives of hate and killing, would be the kinds of people responsible for the apocalypse. Theodore Robert Bundy was also one of these "neurotics." Responsible for the deaths of possibly over thirty young women and girls, Ted Bundy was a bright and handsome young law student who had the world until he lost control of his instinctual lust for killing. In January 1978, Bundy escaped prison for the second time (he was incarcerated for kidnaping and assaulting a young woman; by then Bundy had already committed several murders, and was in the middle of one of his murder trials), and left Colorado to gain his anonymity in Florida, and, perhaps, stop killing (Doyle 31). His ambition was short-lived. On the night of January 14, Bundy sadistically and sexually attacked four young women at the Chi Omega sorority house at Florida State University, killing two and gravely assaulting the other two (34). After lying low for a few weeks, Bundy struck again on February 9. Sexually starving for more, Bundy abducted and murdered twelve-year old Kimberly Leach before finally being apprehended by the police (35). Bundy's fight against his addictive murderous impulses correlates with Freud's discussion on civilization versus nature. With no sense of duty towards mankind, Bundy sought only what he instinctually needed and wanted (Freud 13). He tasted the forbidden fruits of nature and sacrificed human lives to feed his instinctual hunger. Much like the fictional vampire, Bundy's "failure of repression [resulted] in the inability to inhibit powerful [sadistic] needs, which [threatened] to explode into destructive action and produce hideous crimes of violence" (Franzini and Grossberg 75). In return, civilization must arbitrarily suppress instincts that threaten to create disunity and chaos (Freud 17). Human vampires like Ted Bundy must be sedatedin order to insure civilization's survival.

"She destroys us..." says Freud of nature's sadistic personality, "coldly, cruelly, relentlessly, as it seems to us, and possibly through the very things that occasioned our satisfactions" (19). Nature taunts and teases us with these instinctual wishes while we dwell in civilization and suffer from abstinence. Few may claim to possess these violent impulses, but Freud says that they are within all of us, that "the instinctual wishes that suffer under [us] are born afresh with every child" (13). This is nature; it is inescapable if you are human. Serial murderer Dennis Nilsen found his instinctual impulses harder to control as he fell further down the spiral. Starting out with just wanting the comfort of a generous homosexual lover, Nilsen always suffered the loss of companionship after one too many one-night stands (Doyle 132). Unsatisfied with his failing love life, Nilsen decided to do something different, something that would guarantee his satisfaction and satiate his wants and needs. Instead of letting his lovers leave in the morning, Nilsen began killing his lovers one at a time. This allowed him to play out his fantasies with the bodies while they were still warm with no interruptions or quarrels or disagreements (137). For years, Nilsen played this game, and gradually, fifteen men were declared missing. When he was finally caught for his vicious child's play, Nilsen self-reported, "I wished I could stop but I could not. I had no other thrill or happiness" (151). Nilsen's case exemplifies the conflict between nature and civilization as Freud discussed in The Future of an Illusion. Haunted by the desire of the id and unable to restrain himself, Nilsen committed instinctual acts outlawed by society (13). "I caused dreams which caused death," he spoke of his actions. "This is my crime" (Doyle 116).

"There is no credible evidence for supernatural beings who reside in coffins during the day, emerging at night for blood cocktails siphoned from virginal victims, immortal demons vulnerable only to silver bullets and oak stakes pounded into the ancient ticker. These features appear only in fictional vampires" (Franzini and Grossberg 77). On the contrary, excluding all the supernatural factors, the vampire is surely no fictional creature. The serial killer, torn between the confines of society and his instinctual drives, is the vampire we speak of, in fear and in morbid fascination. The horror that clings to us when we hear of such terrifying stories is due to our fear of the damage done to civilization. As citizens of the civilized world, such animalistic crimes hint of our inability to control our impulses, and our heads become clouded by premonitions of the apocalypse. Simultaneously, we are fascinated with these crimes of compulsion. We are fascinated because we can identify the urge from within; to restrain no longer and, as humans, to regress back to our primitive state as animals, depending solely on instinct in order to survive (Fromm 490). But, because of the contents of living together as a civilization and being able to achieve such unities as love and family, we restrain those primal impulses. We deny the animal inside.


Works Cited
oyle, Robert A. True Crime: Serial Killers. Morristown, NJ: The Time Inc. Book Company, 1992.

Franzini, Louis R. and John M. Grossberg. Eccentric and Bizarre Behaviors. New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1995.

Freud, Sigmund. The Future Of An Illusion. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1989.

Fromm, Erich. The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness. New York: Fawcett Crest Books, 1973.

Wilson, Colin and Damon Wilson. The Killers Among Us: Sex, Madness & Mass Murder. New York: Warner Books, Inc., 1995.

Wolf, Leonard. The Essential Dracula. New York: Penguin Books USA Inc., 1993.