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Renfield's syndrome, also called simply Renfield syndrome and traditionally known as clinical vampirism [1] [2] [3], though not currently categorized in the DSM-IV, is a mental disorder used to describe an obsession to drink blood. [4] The term was first coined by Richard Noll and is named after Dracula's insect-eating assistant, Renfield, in the novel by Bram Stoker. [2] [5] [6] The term has been used in both psychiatric and fictional literature, as well as on television, where it was briefly mentioned in an episode of CSI titled "Committed" (Season 5, Episode 21). [7] [2]
People who suffer from this condition are primarily male. The craving for blood arises from the idea that it conveys life-enhancing powers. According to Noll, the condition starts with a key event in childhood that causes the experience of 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 explains that Renfield's syndrome begins with autovampirism and then progresses to the consumption of the blood of other creatures. [2]
The usefulness of this diagnostic label remains in question. Very few cases of the syndrome have been described, and the published reports that do exist refer to what has been proposed as Renfield's syndrome through the use of official psychiatric diagnostic categories such as schizophrenia or as a variety of paraphilia. A number of murderers have performed seemingly vampiric rituals upon their victims. Serial killers Peter Kurten 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.[8]
Clinical Vampirism is a psychological condition in which there is a fixation on blood and the delusion of actually being a vampire. The attraction to blood is primarily erotic in nature and may be accompanied by the idea that its consumption conveys certain powers. Clinical vampirism is believed to develop by way of fantasies involving blood and sexual excitement, usually precipitated by some childhood exposure to blood, which the patient found alluring.
Well known psychiatrist and author Richard Knoll proposed the term Renfield's Syndrome based on Dracula's insect eating thrall, to replace that of clinical vampirism. Used briefly and interchangably with 'clinical vampirism', it is no longer recognised as a diagnostic term by the American Psychiatric Association.
Clinical vampirism/Renfield's usually begins with auto-vampirism, the drinking of one's own blood. The urge is sometimes satisified by this, and its victims typically bear slash marks on their arms or other parts of their bodies where they've cut themselves to draw blood. A related condition is known as SMS or Self Mutilation Syndrome--cutters. Here the primary goal is the cutting itself and to watch ones self bleed. Some cutters drink the blood they draw as well, but these are a minority. Most sufferers of SMS are redirecting feelings of anger, frustration, or emotional pain onto their bodies.
In more sociopathic instances of clinical vampirism/Renfield's, the afflicted may attack animals or people in order to drink their blood. In the most extreme end of the syndrome the they will be satisfied with nothing less than human blood and will take it forcibly, up to and including murder.
CLINICAL TERMS
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