Eros and Thanatos:
Vampirism's Conduit to Mankind

The attempt to formally explain human behavior only began a little more than a century ago. The first lab of psychology was created by psychologist Wilhelm Wundt back in 1879 (McMahon, McMahon and Romano 12). However, vampire folklore has appeared in many cultures many times for centuries (Franzini and Grossberg 58). The vampire has often been depicted as a blood-sucking human-sized parasite caught between two contrasting worlds of life and death, who has the effect of giving the audience a good scare (75). Has one ever thought of how a vampire's behavior represented the eternal struggle within ourselves? Although it may not have been Austrian physician Sigmund Freud's intention to correlate vampirism with actual human behavior, he may have done so in his well-known psychoanalytical theory, Eros and Thanatos.

In order to explain how human necessities such as love and sex ("genital love") can lead to a path of either destruction or self-destruction, Freud introduces Eros, the life, love or sexual instinct, and Thanatos, the death instinct. Eros is a positive energy that innocently yearns for love, unity and companionship (Fromm 494). Its main interests are to share itself with the external world and to preserve life by procreation. To Eros, "life, love and growth are one and the same, more deeply rooted and fundamental than sexuality and 'pleasure'" (Fromm 494). However, although Eros is capably satisfied with new-found love, stability is not easily found because Eros is under the constant threat of Thanatos, the death instinct (Freud 77). "Besides the instinct to preserve living substance and to join it into ever larger units, there must exist another, contrary instinct seeking to dissolve those units and bring them back to their primaeval, inorganic state. That is to say, as well as Eros there [is] an instinct of death" (qtd. in Fromm 490). Thanatos indulges in pleasure (i.e., genital love) and has a tendency to develop a compulsion to repeat desirable acts (490). Self-preservation is Thanatos' main priority, and if pleasure is needed for survival, the death instinct will "provide the ego [the conscience] with the satisfaction of its vital needs and with control over nature" (qtd. in Fromm 513). If the ego is unable to restrain Thanatos, Thanatos can lead the ego to a path of destruction (492). Whether the destruction will be external (outside the self) or internal (within the self) depends on the battle between Eros and Thanatos. If both forces are present within the ego and Eros is the slightly stronger force, self-destruction is more likely to occur. This is because Eros possesses selflessness. The ego will self-destruct on the basis that it is burdened with guilt from Eros but at the same time overwhelmed with the hunger of Thanatos (492). Destruction to the external world will occur if Thanatos continuously defeats Eros, allowing the self to continue its compulsive search for satisfaction (490).

In such modern works as Francis Ford Coppola's film version of Bram Stoker's Dracula, and Anne Rice's "The Master of Rampling Gate", the vampire has been depicted as a romantic and tragic character who is in constant struggle with the two worlds he is a part of. It is in these modern works that Freud's theory of Eros can be clearly seen. Count Dracula, played by actor Gary Oldman in Coppola's version of Dracula, is a grief-stricken warrior who turns his anger towards God after his frenzied wife commits suicide. God, in return, condemns him by transforming him into a vampire. Living in eternal damnation, Dracula awaits the day he and his dead wife will be united. A part of Dracula possesses the love instinct. At times he is selfless and seeks love and unity. In the final stages of the film, Eros and Thanatos are fighting within Dracula. He wants to drink Mina's blood to satisfy his oral sexual desire, but loves her too much to hurt and trap her in the condemned life of vampirism. In "The Master of Rampling Gate", the struggle is more subtle. Although the vampire did preserve the self by using his seductive abilities to capture Julie's heart in order to save Rampling Gate, the unity between the him and Julie seemed to hold more importance in the story (Rice 19). This union that the vampire sought is another example of the life instinct.

The instinct of destruction, or Thanatos, incessantly plagues the modern vampire. The vampire in Sting's jazzy ballad, "Moon Over Bourbon Street", expresses his struggle between his sinful pleasures and his emotional bond to the object of desire.

She walks every day through the streets of New Orleans.
She's innocent and young from a family of means.
I have stood many times outside her window at night
To struggle with my instinct in the pale moonlight.
How could I be this way when I pray to God above?
I must love what I destroy, and destroy the thing I love. (stanza 4)

He cannot understand why he must kill the thing he adores most. Moreover, he does not know how to stop. He has a compulsion to repeat his oral sadistic rituals, not only because the animal in him desires it, but because he needs human blood to survive. This haunting nature of a vampire is synonymous with the textbook definition of Freud's theory of Thanatos. Thanatos destroys to protect the self from harm. It is an inevitable force within all egos because it is essential to the ego's existence. "Since the death instinct is a drive, it cannot be denied, and the destruction it causes cannot be prevented" (Goldberg 28).

People may find it difficult to recognize the human within these vampire beasts who often appear in horror films and dark literature. The vampire nature is so intensely sadistic and horrific that people habitually define such monsters as inhuman as possible. But what explains such phenomenons as the wars we've fought and the various holocausts that have occurred? Why is it so difficult to understand the nature of a vampire when it is mankind who is responsible for such catastrophes? Devastated by the brutalities of the first World War, Freud created the theory of Eros and Thanatos to explain the extremities of destruction. Within this theory he discovers that the individual in society will always contain the polarity of Eros and Thanatos, the life instinct wanting to share and achieve unity, the death instinct wanting to revolt and preserve the self (27). How extreme these two instincts are depend on the individual, and sometimes the battle of Eros and Thanatos can be so conflicting as to cause destruction to the self and the external world. Radical examples of these tragic phenomenons are history's crusades, wars, holocausts, and the modern serial murderer (31). Much like the vampire, the people involved in the latter man-made disasters fought their own internal war between Eros and Thanatos where the life instinct suffered defeat, and the death instinct celebrated victory by spreading destruction. Needless to say, Freud's theory of Eros and Thanatos explains the vampire within ourselves.

"The conclusion now presents itself to us that there is indeed something innate lying behind the perversions but it is something innate in everyone, though as a disposition it may vary in its intensity and may be increased by the influences of actual life" (qtd. in Simon 305). According to Freud's theory, all people contain both the life and death instinct, which also happen to illustrate the nature of the vampire. The range of intensities may vary among individuals, but Eros and Thanatos will never cease to exist from within (Goldberg 28). Some feel it more than others; they recognize the vampire when glancing in the mirror. Others may never feel or identify with it and may find the theory preposterous. Nonetheless, the parallels between the vampire nature and Eros and Thanatos are too immense to dismiss. Eros and Thanatos could possibly be the conduit connecting the vampire nature with human behavior. They represent the vampire within us. We ourselves are the vampires our minds create.


Works Cited

Bram Stoker's Dracula. Dir. Francis Ford Coppola. With Anthony Hopkins, Gary Oldman, Keanu Reeves, and Winona Ryder. Columbia/Zoetrope, 1992.

Franzini, Louis R. and John M. Grossberg. Eccentric and Bizarre Behaviors. New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1995.

Freud, Sigmund. Civilization and Its Discontents. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1989.

Fromm, Erich. The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness. New York: Fawcett Crest Books, 1973.

Goldberg, Carl. Speaking With The Devil: Exploring Senseless Acts Of Evil. New York: Penguin Books USA Inc., 1997.

McMahon, Frank B., Judith W. McMahon and Tony Romano. Psychology and You. New York: West Publishing Company, 1990.

Rice, Anne. "The Master of Rampling Gate." Vampires, Wine & Roses. Ed. John Richard Stephens. New York: The Berkley Publishing Group, 1997.

Simon, Robert I. Bad Men Do What Good Men Dream. Washington, D.C.: American Psychiatric Press, Inc., 1996.

Sting. Moon Over Bourbon Street. With Omar Hakim, Darryl Jones, Kenny Kirkland, and Branford Marsalis. A&M Records, Inc., CD 3750, 1985.

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