Classification

Taken Verbatim From:

"Vampires, Werewolves, & Demons. Twentieth Century Reports in the Psychiatric Literature."  Richard Noll.  Brunner/Mazel Publishing, Inc.  New York, New York.  ©1992. p.76-77

From the information collected from respondents and from a synthesis of the sparse clinical literature, it is possible to suggest a four-fold classification:

1. Complete vampirism - involving ingestion of blood, necrophilic activity, and necro-sadism.  This would also include what Walker (1978) has described as haemolagnia or blood lust (See also Burton-Bradley, 1976).

2. Vampirism without ingestion of blood or consumption of dead flesh.  Bourguignon (1983) describes this as necrophilia pure and simple, and suggests that it consists of sexual satisfaction largely derived from touching (interference) or sexual intercourse with a dead body.

3. Vampirism without death being involved - see also Vandenberg & Kelly (1964), Krafft-Ebing, (1978), and Bourguignon, (1983).

4. Auto-vampirism.  This heading would include those cases in which the individual derived satisfaction from ingestion of his or her own blood (McCully, 1964, Hemphill & Zabow, 1983).  The phenomenon of auto-vampirism can be further sub-divided into: (a) Self-induced bleeding with ingestion of blood. (b) Voluntary bleeding with re-ingestion of blood. (c) Auto-haemofetishism - a condition described by Bartholomew (1973) in which pleasure, mostly sexual, is derived from the sight of blood drawn up in a syringe in the process of intravenous drug addictive practice.

Some of the present author's respondents detailed cases in which self-mutilation had been linked with minor blood ingestive activity, most frequently in association with attention-seeking behaviour.  Kwawer (1980) reports a serious example of this kind of self-mutilation: this concerned a female patient who stored her own blood in order to look at it in times of stress, since she considered it had a calming effect upon her.  One of the author's respondents described a somewhat similar case in which a male patient stored his blood to achieve similar results.