Retrospective Analysis of Renfield: The Reciprocal Relationship Between Mental Illness and Vampirism

Abstract

R.M. Renfield is a character in Bram Stoker’s 1897 Dracula that has contributed to a growing body of literature that uses the term Renfield Syndrome to describe real-life clinical vampirism. Renfield, an inmate of Dr. John Steward’s lunatic asylum, has a growing obsession with immortality that leads him to consume living creatures for their life force and eventually results in him licking Dr. Steward’s blood from the ground. Renfield’s zoophagous behavior is encouraged by the vampire Count Dracula, with whom Renfield has a telepathic connection. The current work explores the character Renfield in Dracula and identifies him as an anti-vampirism archetype that has a reciprocal relationship between mental illness and vampirism because while his mental instability causes his vampirism, the exacerbation of his mental instability is also the punishment for his vampirism.