The vampire occupies a distinctive and richly overdetermined position within the depth-psychology corpus. It functions simultaneously as mythological image, clinical metaphor, and archetypal figure of destructive psychic possession. Jung himself locates the succubus as a vampire — the man's contrasexual complement to the woman's incubus, suggesting the figure's intimate relationship to anima dynamics. Von Franz extends the vampire's structural logic to fairy-tale trolls who drain the blood of their victims, rendering the image an archetypal emblem of dissociated energies that withdraw vitality from the human realm. Schoen deploys the vampire with particular force as an analogue for addiction, arguing that the figure exemplifies untransformable archetypal evil — a predatory complex from which one cannot negotiate release, only flight or annihilation. Kalsched invokes the vampire as a clinical shorthand for the daimonic formations that arise in traumatic dissociation, linking it to Jung's own moon-lady case material. Klein approaches the figure obliquely, noting Abraham's identification of 'vampire-like' sucking as evidence of oral-sadistic destructiveness inherent prior to teething. Across these positions a consistent tension emerges: whether the vampire represents something genuinely untransformable — an absolute shadow — or whether it is a mythological image whose energy can be therapeutically reclaimed once its possession of the psyche is recognized.
In the library
10 passages
The vampire is the murderer who preys on the innocent, lures and seduces them with his charms until he can sink his teeth into their necks and suck the very life blood from their veins, drop by drop, until they are too weak and drained to resist, and then they too join the ranks of the living dead.
Schoen argues that the vampire functions as the archetypal image of addiction — an untransformable evil that progressively drains the victim's vitality until they become themselves part of the living dead, exactly mirroring the phenomenology of late-stage alcoholism.
Schoen, David E., The War of the Gods in Addiction: C.G. Jung, Alcoholics Anonymous and Archetypal Evil, 2020thesis
The woman's incubus consists of a host of masculine demons; the man's succubus is a vampire.
Jung's formulation, quoted by Hillman, establishes the vampire as the archetypal form of the man's succubus — the singular, unity-driven contrasexual possession that contrasts with the woman's plural incubus host.
Hillman, James, Anima: An Anatomy of a Personified Notion, 1985thesis
The troll has stolen or attracted all life and emotion away from the human realm where it belongs, and thus brought the people into a state of possession. People who are possessed, be it by some religious or political fanaticism or something else, are often physically pale. It is as though they literally have no blood.
Von Franz reads the blood-draining troll as a structural equivalent of the vampire, arguing that possession by fanaticism or compulsion literally withdraws libido from the human realm and renders its victims affectless, pale, and unable to enjoy life.
von Franz, Marie-Louise, Archetypal Patterns in Fairy Tales, 1997thesis
The 'great beings' in Ariane's dreams would represent personifications of unconscious fantasy/structures — just like the 'vampire' we witnessed in Jung's 'Moon-lady' fantasy (Chapter 3) and would not necessarily be interpreted as 'stand-ins' for known personal content.
Kalsched invokes the vampire from Jung's moon-lady case as a paradigm instance of an archetypal image that must be understood on its own mythological terms rather than reduced to personal content such as a father-imago.
Kalsched, Donald, The Inner World of Trauma: Archetypal Defences of the Personal Spirit, 1996supporting
Abraham has also pointed out the sadism inherent in 'vampire-like' sucking. There is no doubt that the onset of teething and the physiological proc
Klein cites Abraham's identification of vampire-like oral sucking as evidence of primary oral-sadistic destructiveness, locating the vampire image within early infantile phantasy and the origins of envious attack.
Klein, Melanie, Envy and Gratitude and Other Works 1946-1963, 1957supporting
He is a blood sucker whose bite spreads pestilence and whose droppings defile the environment. He swoops around in the dark and according to folk belief, has a penchant for entangling himself in one's hair, causing hysteric confusion.
Nichols, interpreting Blake's Satan, draws on the bat-as-vampire symbolism to characterize the Devil archetype as a nocturnal blood-draining force that operates precisely when the rational ego is unconscious and unprotected.
Nichols, Sallie, Jung and Tarot: An Archetypal Journey, 1980supporting
The index of Schoen's text maps the vampire's recurrence across multiple chapters, confirming its sustained structural role as both clinical metaphor and archetypal image throughout his analysis of addiction and archetypal evil.
Schoen, David E., The War of the Gods in Addiction: C.G. Jung, Alcoholics Anonymous and Archetypal Evil, 2020aside
Signell's index entry places the vampire in the context of women's dream imagery, associating it indexically with the Wise Old Woman, the witch, and nightmares, suggesting its appearance in clinical dreamwork with women.
Signell, Karen A., Wisdom of the Heart: Working with Womens Dreams, 1991aside
unconscious; archetypes and; psyche and vampire motifs
Von Franz's index to The Interpretation of Fairy Tales classifies vampire imagery as a distinct motif category alongside other archetypal motifs, confirming the figure's place as a recognized typological element in fairy-tale interpretation.
von Franz, Marie-Louise, The Interpretation of Fairy Tales, 1970aside
the behaviors of wolves, dolphins, and vampire bats, among other species, even suggest an ethical structure.
Damasio invokes the vampire bat in a purely zoological register to illustrate innate social cooperation as a precursor to human ethical structures, with no depth-psychological application.
Damasio, Antonio R., Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain, 1994aside