Are the Vampires of fiction modelled on Schizoids?

Very interesting perspectives.

@biteme Very detailed analysis and not boring at all.

When it comes down to it, vampires like all monsters, are really useful as screens on which people can project their particular fears, and as those fears change over time. While mental illness has certainly been a fear for many people & still is, I don't think personality disorders are what most people think of in those terms. And I don't think the vampire was a very useful figure for those particular fears. Mr. Hyde certainly represents a fear of mental illness, but he isn't really very schizoid--maybe manic and certainly sociopathic.

True, I think a lot of the motivation behind literature (as well as other art forms) is a way to sublimate fear and put it in a format in which it can be more easily understood, controlled, sort of a way of facing one's fears so that the fears lose power.

I think the vampire has probably represented different things over time. As Exempt said, in the current times it seems to represent addiction.

I also agree with Bewitched that it does seem to align more with BPD now that I think about it more, well, maybe not BPD per se, but with a desire to possess a person, their body and soul, if you will. Which probably comes from fear of abandonment.

As Mobzie said, a lot of people seem to associate vampires with people who are driven and charismatic. I hadn't had that association, myself. I think of them as reclusive and secretive, but people can interpret art and literature in different ways, I suppose. Perhaps projecting some of their own psychological traits onto the characters, or "monsters" ? (especially if those psychological traits are suppressed)

I may be wrong, but I believe the story of the vampire has been around since biblical times. The origins of the vampire were the children of Cain, were they not? So they seem to represent outcasts. At least, from my own interpretation they seem to represent that.

MotherRussia wrote: The origins of the vampire were the children of Cain, were they not?

Oh, God, no. This story is from the role-playing-game „Vampire: The Masquerade“.

Exempt wrote:what they most represent, at least nowadays in my opinion, is addicts.

I never saw it from that angle. Also "Only Lovers Left Alive" left me with quite another impresson. Maybe because addiction sounds to me like nothing else matters anymore and Eve and Adam had other fields of interest.
"The Addiction" is new to me. Thank you.

I don't how they were modelled in the past, but today it seems to me that the vampire corresponds the popular image of the "narcissist" :

He is lonely, wealthy, attractive, seductive
Once he catches a prey - an attractive and vulnerable woman - he'll suck her blood and take all life inside her, until she becomes herself a dead-alive person.
He needs this blood from several preys, always new ones, to survive.
Even the mirror image is present : as he doesn't exist by himself, the mirror doesn't reflect his image and he needs the mirror of himself in people.
You'll find articles on "how to spot a narcissist" with techniques to detect them, because they look normal while being different.

I tried to google "vampire narcissist" and found plenty of articles based on that comparison like this one https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/ev ... -speak-out etc.

So yes, for me the classic image of the vampire became, in medias, the popular image of the "narcissist".


Now, it seems to me that the vampire has changed in series like Twilight, which might be closer to something like unreachable closeness, it seems to me?

A lot closer to narcissist, yes.

The original from Stoker did not have any real personality. He seemed to represent more some fantasies of the women he was biting, and the fear of the men to loose them. The characters have very few interactions with Dracula, he is more like something out there in the shadows. I guess he was close to some sort of male succubus.

Honestly vampires remind me more of AsPD- they love to suck the life out of people.

Vampires existed in folklore for a long time before they were written into fiction. They came about because people didn't really understand death & there were probably cases where people were buried alive. I know there was at least one case in medieval England where someone was murdered because people thought he had died and then got up, so they assumed he was a vampire.

A vampire expert called "biteme" .

For those who haven't, read Let The Right One In. It's one of my favorite books. The whole thing feels like a huge metaphor for people with a personality disorder like ours. Being a shallow, dark, cursed creature that's a total loner incapable of trully connecting but also needing other people to use like a parasite, therefore being constantly caught in between the "i don't want you" and "i need to use you so i actually need to get close to you". All of that covered in a carefully created façade, of course, like us secret schizoids and other people who know how to mask their PDs are.

People with ASPD and schizoids will definitely see themselves in the vampire character from the book. If you have gender issues then that's a plus, but I won't go on about that 'cause it would be full of spoilers. So yeah I can totally see how you think some vampires might be based on people with schizoid personality disorder (I felt that way as well after reading that book) but I doubt that was intentional.

The authors simply gather several human traits and put them into those characters and the result is very schizoid for it has lots of schizoid characteristics and dilemmas, but I doubt they know about SPD. When you're creating a character that is apathetic, lonely, dark and somber and a loner then you're bound to create a very schizoid individual anyway. Especially if that individual is divided like a vampire is (self vs animal/monster).

Avolition wrote:For those who haven't, read Let The Right One In. It's one of my favorite books. The whole thing feels like a huge metaphor for people with a personality disorder like ours. Being a shallow, dark, cursed creature that's a total loner incapable of trully connecting but also needing other people to use like a parasite, therefore being constantly caught in between the "i don't want you" and "i need to use you so i actually need to get close to you". All of that covered in a carefully created façade, of course, like us secret schizoids and other people who know how to mask their PDs are.

People with ASPD and schizoids will definitely see themselves in the vampire character from the book. If you have gender issues then that's a plus, but I won't go on about that 'cause it would be full of spoilers. So yeah I can totally see how you think some vampires might be based on people with schizoid personality disorder (I felt that way as well after reading that book) but I doubt that was intentional.

The authors simply gather several human traits and put them into those characters and the result is very schizoid for it has lots of schizoid characteristics and dilemmas, but I doubt they know about SPD. When you're creating a character that is apathetic, lonely, dark and somber and a loner then you're bound to create a very schizoid individual anyway. Especially if that individual is divided like a vampire is (self vs animal/monster).

Sounds good.

Vampires are too flamboyant and too needy to resemble schizoids. They are also supposed to be very sexy and seductive, which doesn't sound schizoid to me, sorry guys. I base my opinion on half a vampire novel and a few movies. What they have in common though is that they are outsiders, emotionally both oversensitive and undersensitive at the same time, removed from many things that are considered normal, relatively mechanical in their reasons and actions and bad at communicating.