Vampirism | |
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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]
Catatonia is a complex neuropsychiatric behavioral syndrome that is characterized by abnormal movements, immobility, abnormal behaviors, and withdrawal. The onset of catatonia can be acute or subtle and symptoms can wax, wane, or change during episodes. It has historically been related to schizophrenia, but catatonia is most often seen in mood disorders. It is now known that catatonic symptoms are nonspecific and may be observed in other mental, neurological, and medical conditions. Catatonia is now a stand-alone diagnosis, and the term is used to describe a feature of the underlying disorder.
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders is a publication by the American Psychiatric Association (APA) for the classification of mental disorders using a common language and standard criteria. It is the main book for the diagnosis and treatment of mental disorders in the United States and Australia, while in other countries it may be used in conjunction with other documents. The DSM-5 is considered one of the principal guides of psychiatry, along with the International Classification of Diseases (ICD), Chinese Classification of Mental Disorders (CCMD), and the Psychodynamic Diagnostic Manual. However, not all providers rely on the DSM-5 as a guide, since the ICD's mental disorder diagnoses are used around the world and scientific studies often measure changes in symptom scale scores rather than changes in DSM-5 criteria to determine the real-world effects of mental health interventions.
Dementia praecox is a disused psychiatric diagnosis that originally designated a chronic, deteriorating psychotic disorder characterized by rapid cognitive disintegration, usually beginning in the late teens or early adulthood. Over the years, the term dementia praecox was gradually replaced by the term schizophrenia, which initially had a meaning that included what is today considered the autism spectrum.
Emil Wilhelm Georg Magnus Kraepelin was a German psychiatrist. H. J. Eysenck's Encyclopedia of Psychology identifies him as the founder of modern scientific psychiatry, psychopharmacology and psychiatric genetics.
Schizoaffective disorder is a mental disorder characterized by abnormal thought processes and an unstable mood. This diagnosis requires symptoms of both schizophrenia and a mood disorder: either bipolar disorder or depression. The main criterion is the presence of psychotic symptoms for at least two weeks without any mood symptoms. Schizoaffective disorder can often be misdiagnosed when the correct diagnosis may be psychotic depression, bipolar I disorder, schizophreniform disorder, or schizophrenia. This is a problem as treatment and prognosis differ greatly for most of these diagnoses.
The vampire lifestyle, vampire subculture, or vampire community is an alternative lifestyle and subculture based around the mythology of and popular culture based on vampires. Those within the subculture commonly identify with or as vampires, with participants typically taking heavy inspiration from media and pop culture based on vampiric folklore and legend, such as the gothic soap opera Dark Shadows, the tabletop role-playing game Vampire: The Masquerade, and the book series The Vampire Chronicles by author Anne Rice. Practices within the vampire community range from blood-drinking from willing donors to organising groups known as 'houses' and 'courts' of self-identified vampires.
Clinical lycanthropy is a rare psychiatric syndrome that involves a delusion that the affected person can transform into, has transformed into, or is, a non-human animal. Its name is associated with the mythical condition of lycanthropy, a supernatural affliction in which humans are said to physically shapeshift into wolves.
Asymptomatic is an adjective categorising the medical conditions that patients carry but without experiencing their symptoms, despite an explicit diagnosis.
R. M. Renfield is a fictional character who appears in Bram Stoker's 1897 Gothic horror novel Dracula. He is Count Dracula's deranged, fanatically devoted servant and familiar, helping him in his plan to turn Mina Harker into a vampire in return for a continuous supply of insects to consume and the promise of immortality. Throughout the novel, he resides in an asylum, where he is treated by Dr. John Seward.
Ganser syndrome is a rare dissociative disorder characterized by nonsensical or wrong answers to questions and other dissociative symptoms such as fugue, amnesia or conversion disorder, often with visual pseudohallucinations and a decreased state of consciousness. The syndrome has also been called nonsense syndrome, balderdash syndrome, syndrome of approximate answers, hysterical pseudodementia or prison psychosis.
Dhat syndrome is a condition found in the cultures of South Asia in which male patients report that they suffer from premature ejaculation or impotence, and believe that they are passing semen in their urine. The condition has no known organic cause.
In medicine and medical anthropology, a culture-bound syndrome, culture-specific syndrome, or folk illness is a combination of psychiatric and somatic symptoms that are considered to be a recognizable disease only within a specific society or culture. There are no objective biochemical or structural alterations of body organs or functions, and the disease is not recognized in other cultures. The term culture-bound syndrome was included in the fourth version of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders which also includes a list of the most common culture-bound conditions. Counterpart within the framework of ICD-10 are the culture-specific disorders defined in Annex 2 of the Diagnostic criteria for research.
Pathological lying, also known as mythomania and pseudologia fantastica, is a chronic behavior characterized by the habitual or compulsive tendency to lie. It involves a pervasive pattern of intentionally making false statements with the aim of deceiving others, sometimes without a clear or apparent reason. Individuals who engage in pathological lying often claim to be unaware of the motivations behind their lies.
Richard Noll is an American clinical psychologist and historian of medicine. He has published on the history of psychiatry, including two critical volumes on the life and work of Carl Gustav Jung, books and articles on the history of dementia praecox and schizophrenia, and on anthropology on shamanism. His books and articles have been translated into fifteen foreign languages and he has delivered invited presentations in nineteen countries on six continents.
Auto-vampirism is a form of vampirism that refers to drinking one's own blood, typically as a form of sexual gratification. As a mental disorder, this is also called as autohemophagia, which is derived from three Greek words: auto, which means "self"; hemo, for "blood"; and, phag, meaning "to eat". Although closely related to vampirism, the two differ in that vampirism is a sadistic act while auto-vampirism is on the side of masochism. Along with drinking their own blood, most practitioners of auto-vampirism also engage in self-harm in order to obtain the blood.
Organic brain syndrome, also known as organic brain disease, organic brain damage, organic brain disorder, organic mental syndrome, or organic mental disorder, refers to any syndrome or disorder of mental function whose cause is alleged to be known as organic (physiologic) rather than purely of the mind. These names are older and nearly obsolete general terms from psychiatry, referring to many physical disorders that cause impaired mental function. They are meant to exclude psychiatric disorders. Originally, the term was created to distinguish physical causes of mental impairment from psychiatric disorders, but during the era when this distinction was drawn, not enough was known about brain science for this cause-based classification to be more than educated guesswork labeled with misplaced certainty, which is why it has been deemphasized in current medicine. While mental or behavioural abnormalities related to the dysfunction can be permanent, treating the disease early may prevent permanent damage in addition to fully restoring mental functions. An organic cause to brain dysfunction is suspected when there is no indication of a clearly defined psychiatric or "inorganic" cause, such as a mood disorder.
The classification of mental disorders, also known as psychiatric nosology or psychiatric taxonomy, is central to the practice of psychiatry and other mental health professions.
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition (DSM-5), is the 2013 update to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the taxonomic and diagnostic tool published by the American Psychiatric Association (APA). In 2022, a revised version (DSM-5-TR) was published. In the United States, the DSM serves as the principal authority for psychiatric diagnoses. Treatment recommendations, as well as payment by health care providers, are often determined by DSM classifications, so the appearance of a new version has practical importance. However, not all providers rely on the DSM-5 for planning treatment as the ICD's mental disorder diagnoses are used around the world and scientific studies often measure changes in symptom scale scores rather than changes in DSM-5 criteria to determine the real-world effects of mental health interventions. The DSM-5 is the only DSM to use an Arabic numeral instead of a Roman numeral in its title, as well as the only living document version of a DSM.
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Psychiatrists are aware that there exists a behavior known as "clinical vampirism," which is a syndrome involving the delusion of actually being a vampire and feeling the need for blood. This arises not from fiction and film but from the erotic attraction to blood, and the idea that it conveys certain powers, although the actual manifestation of the fantasy may be influenced by fiction. It develops through fantasies involving sexual excitement.
Kenny Valdez is in the Seclusion Room, strapped to a bed in a five-point restraint system, claiming he can "smell it!" Kenny [has] Renfield's syndrome, a self-mutilator. The CSIs notice that even though Kenny has blood on his clothes, there is no spatter pattern.