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This article explores aspects of psychic vampirism that may arise in psychoanalytic treatment. Psychic vampirism is a term employed by Melton (1994, p. 6) to describe a relationship in which one person is experienced as draining the energy or life force of another. (This, of course, is differentiated from actual vampirism in which the blood is, in reality, parasitically sucked from another.) I have widened Melton's conception to include developmental issues regarding various characteristics that are also associated with the vampire myth. In the clinical setting, patients with a vampiric relationship to an early object may manifest what I term a vampiric transference. Transference and countertransference issues relating to these topics are explored. Early mythology associated with the vampire will be related to a vampirelike transference. This is linked to early anxiety-creating physical transformations of the mother. The traumatic reaction to these physical transformations is seen as the result of threats to object constancy.
The methodology I have used traverses several psychoanalytic avenues. Themes regarding universal vampire myths, a vampiric transference, and certain developmental issues are combined in an attempt to lend support to a comprehension of complex phenomena. I believe the broad topic that relates myth-building and universal aspects of certain mothering issues requires this approach.
How universal are these themes? Have these issues formed the basis for the creation of a universal myth? This study attempts to explore these complex issues and, I hope, stimulate further interest in these topics.
The current popular Western vampire legend depicts the drinking of the blood of others by a man who is dead but as undead is still able to have limited function. However, the original Eastern vampire legends differ in that the vampire is almost always a female. Her motivation usually stems from anger and revenge for wrongs actually done to her.