Passing through the hatred and rage at the sociopath’s betrayal

Donna Andersen writes:

“But perhaps the biggest reason why it’s so bad is because sociopaths steal our dreams and use them against us. In those heady early days of the relationship, as the sociopaths listen intently, we’re spilling our guts, telling them what we really want, what is really important to us, what we want out of life. We think they’re listening because they truly want everything that we want. In reality, they’re listening to discover the deepest places within us where they can set their hooks.”

There’s a book called “Unholy Hungers: Encountering the Psychic Vampire” that talks at length about this particular dynamic though it isn’t presented in terms of narcissists or psychopaths. It’s written by Jungian psychologist, Barbara Hort, and the Jungian perspective is very interesting because it talks about the “Inner Beloved,” or how each of us has an ideal image of what the “True Love” should be, and this is generally a reflection of who and what we are ourselves and what kind of love we are willing/capable of giving under ideal conditions (i.e., with the “right” partner). The psychopath/narcissist taps into this image mainly through suggestion and it is ultimately our own mind that ends up projecting the image of our Inner Beloved onto the psychopath/narcissist rather than them having any real ability to enact any of the real aspects of the Inner Beloved.

So, in the end, when the truth begins to manifest, what actually happens is that we experience the death of our Inner Beloved which is far more cruel than experiencing the death of a real person with whom we have a relationship because this Inner Beloved is inside us, it is part of us – we experience the death of the most treasured part of us, an Ideal Dream of Love.

Who knows? The archetype of the Inner Beloved we carry inside ourselves may actually be an image of someone, somewhere, who really DOES exist, only we haven’t met that person. An important point to remember about the possibility of meeting the REAL representation of the Inner Beloved is that this dynamic can be evoked by physical attributes that have nothing whatsoever to do with a human being who actually does embody these traits.

What I mean is this: while our subconscious mind has an image of spiritual attributes, our conscious mind may have created visual likenesses that are supposed to represent these traits. These likenesses may be based on someone in our early lives we admired or loved, or an actor in a movie we saw at an impressionable age. We may have in mind that our “True Love Ideal” is tall and dark and handsome, when, in fact, the real person we might meet who has all the soul qualities of this ideal Love is short, blond and plain. How many of us may have rejected the one person who might have been capable of returning the kind of love we ourselves are capable of giving because they didn’t trigger the visual image programmed into us by our upbringing and/or society? Barbra de Angelis writes about this problem quite compellingly in her little book “Are You The One For Me?”

Anyway, Barbara Hort talks about the Vampire archetype and it is a darn good description of our interactions with narcissists and psychopaths. Using Vampire lore, we can learn how to recognize the various types of psychic vampires (psychopath/narcissist) at the very early stages. The following is a short paraphrase from Hort’s much longer discussion:

Myths tell us that the vampire is most likely to attack at night, while we drift in a dreamy unconsciousness. This implies that we yield to the vampire because we don’t fully realize what’s happening. Specifically, we are most susceptible to the psychic vampire when we are unconscious or dreamily yearning – states in which the vampire can successfully disguise itself as a lover or friend. This makes sense, because who of us would acquiesce to the vampire if we could see, in the bright daylight of consciousness, the cold void behind its eyes and the bloodless pallor of its heart? Obviously, the cloak of night is a necessary part of the vampire’s seduction and a metaphor for how narcissist and psychopaths operate.

Seduction is essential to the vampire’s success, for the myth also tells us that a vampire may enter its victim’s domain only if the victim can be persuaded to invite the vampire across the threshold of her door (or through the window). In other words, something in us must cooperate and invite the vampire into our lives.

Why do we open the door or the window?

First, as just noted, the vampire usually slips in during the “psychological night”, when we are sleepily unaware of its lethal purpose. Nighttime is not only the classic symbol of unconsciousness, but also the time when we are most subject to fearful despair, when we undergo our “dark nights of the soul.” The psychic vampire chooses these moments to approach us with its offer of exploitation as a substitute for love because it knows that its “protection” will seem to be our only means of surviving in the dark, loveless place. This is the guiding principle of every con artist – he pitches redemptive bliss in exchange for cash only when his targeted victims are weak with pain or desperation. The psychic vampire uses the same con artistry. And sure enough, we who are frightened and hurting leap straight into its jaws.

Even with such willing victims as we, the vampire proceeds gently – promising us immortality and eternal love, sighing over its solitude, and yearning for a true companion. We hear the vampire’s sweet words in the midst of our anguish, and we are reborn with hope. We offer warmth, companionship, and most of all, love, love, love to this beacon of rescue in our black despair. Love and more love for the vampire, who lures us ever closer with gestures of affection, words of respect, and other such baubles as desperate souls crave. Many of us spend a lifetime caught in this dance. We gush with love, and the psychic vampire tosses us bait for more loving. Like homeless dogs, we roll at the vampire’s feet, tails wagging, tongues lolling, necks bared in blind rapture at our great good fortune in the quest for love. The vampire stands over us, stroking our fur and lulling us with its caresses. Patiently, it waits for the moment when we will close our eyes in bliss, blinding ourselves to the sight of the fans, the scent of stale blood, the stab and the draining before the next lure. …

The second reason that we are likely to open the window to the vampire is that, even in the twilit world of unconsciousness, the vampire cloaks its bleak truth in a dazzling array of disguises, most of which are animals and the most famous of which is the bat. Of course, even the most virulent psychic vampire must appear to us in the physical shape of a human, not a bat. But there is a way in which even a psychic vampire can be a shape shifter. Its physical form may remain human, but its energy can flicker instantly from wolf to mist to cat to spider to bat and poof! to invisibility.

With all these energetic shapes, it is hard for even the most conscious victim to perceive the vampire that lurks behind the many masks. The vampire’s mask of invisibility is particularly intriguing since it suggests that we are, in some way, complicit in the vampire’s success. As the Dracula scholar Leonard Wolf observes, “we cannot see vampires because … we choose not to see those aspects of ourselves that are most like those of the vampire.” Thus, our reluctance to see our own potential vampiric qualities can blind us to the vampiric energies in others. Think, for example, of the stereotypic “trophy wife” who may (unconsciously) hope to parlay her husband’s wealth to her own benefit, only to find herself depleted and discarded when her beauty starts to fade. Our reluctance to see our own vampiric potential is understandable but dangerous, since it increases the likelihood that we will be victimized by a psychic vampire.

While collaborative invisibility serves the vampire’s ends, the most deceptive disguise in the vampire’s repertoire is undoubtedly its charismatic mixture of sexuality and power:

Although the vampire takes from his victim to feed his hunger, it is as if he is satisfying a hunger in his audience ”“ a hunger for sexuality and sensuality, a desire to live forever, a yearning to be both empowered and powerless and thus completely without any responsibility for one’s own actions (Dresser, 1989, 168)

In our moments of weakness, self-doubt, and desperation, which of us could resist the invitation of such a godly creature? And as if godliness were not alluring enough, we find that this superhuman entity is lonely: lonely for a special companion ”“ somebody just like us. We are wooed by the vampire’s enchanting disguise of loneliness that yearns for transcendent union.

The vampire’s mastery of disguise is related to the third reason that we allow it to enter our lives. All too frequently, we admit the psychic vampire out of simple courtesy and compassion. We assume the psychic vampire to be one of us ”“ a person with an empathic soul that resonates with other souls and wishes them well. So we answer the vampire’s little questions and indulge its little needs. We may experience a flicker of uneasy suspicion when its questions feel a bit too probing or its needs feel insatiable, but we are usually too busy politely accommodating the vampire to investigate our suspicious.

This part of the vampire’s tale reminds me of a woman I used to know, someone who always began our conversations with a detailed inquiry about my current state of affairs. At the beginning of our acquaintance, I thought her questions indicated a sincere interest in my life.. Eventually, however, her inquiries came to seem impersonal and mechanistic. It was as if she were conducting an in-depth interview with an important stranger. Moreover, my answers seemed to be like loot to her, a treasure to be used later for purposes that were unclear (to me, anyway) at the moment of questioning. The obscurity of the interview’s purpose was, in fact, why I continued to comply with the woman’s questions, even after I became uncomfortable with them ”“ I was too puzzled and polite to withhold the answers.

Finally, I realized that this woman’s careful interviews were always followed by a litany of her own woes and usually by a favor she was requesting of me. After responding to her many “concerned” questions about my well-being and needs, how could I refuse to listen and comply with hers? In truth, the whole duet was a double whammy. Not only did the woman receive my sympathy and favors, but she also received information (another tactic of exploitation, because the more you know about someone, the more power you have over them). I, on the other hand, received only the empty calories of my illusion that we were friends.

The fourth reason we invite the vampire to enter is that its earliest attacks typically occur in early childhood, when we are too physically and psychically dependent on the vampires to refuse their advances.
Another piece of common vampire lore states that “the draining of another’s energy is particularly likely to happen in a marriage, family, or other close emotional relationship ”“ traditionally the vampire’s favorite feeding ground” (Farson 1976, 37). In other words, the first vampire archetypes we meet are likely to be active in our parents’ psyches. Later in our lives, we will probably encounter these energies again in the people who most resemble our parents on the psychic level. (And this may be why the visual images and cues for the spiritual qualities of our Internal Beloved are so skewed). For most of us, these new bearers of the vampire archetype will be our friend, our colleagues, and our mates.

Before you fall back in revulsion and denial, remember that the psychic vampire is an archetype, which means that it is one of many forms of energy that are active in a given individual’s psyche. Persons who are vampiric will usually have many non-vampiric energetic fields as well. Consider the ancient notion of vampirism as a kind of infection. There are many ways in which an infection can invade the body. Some infections are localized in one part of the body, while others are systemic and affect the entire body equally. Some are severe and require drastic measures to combat them. Some require a form of treatment that will not permanently damage the body, while others require treatment so severe that the body will be destroyed by whatever it takes to kill the infection.

The abrupt speed with which a vampire archetype may be activated and deactivated can surprise us to the point of disbelief.

Of course, the person in whom the vampire archetype is active is unlikely to be aware since vampires cannot see themselves in a mirror. The psychic vampire may think nothing of her vampiric behavior, or may even label it as “love.” Indeed, one of the most frightening aspects of psychic vampirism is that it often travels, even in the mind of the vampire, under the name of love. A vampire’s “love” is usually based on a conditional approval that masks its ethic of exploitation. This kind of “love,” which is the only kind a psychic vampire can offer, masks a profound psychic greed which makes the vampire incapable of offering to our love-seeking heart anything more than a sucking hole of greediness disguised as the solicitude of love. “Ah! Here is a tasty morsel! And since it looks to me for love, it will be happy to be exploited if I promise it “love in return!”

“It” is the operative word in the last sentence, for when the vampire archetype is active, we are no longer human in that person’s eyes. ” What’s more, it may seem as if the vampiric person’s soul has also ceased to exist, in order for the vampire to be capable of exploiting the victim’s life force. It is as if the soul of the exploiter were dead.

The myth tells us that when the vampire is destroyed, if his victim has not yet died, vampiric infection can be reversed. This part of the myth suggests that when the illusion dies, the loving part of the victim’s psyche is reactivated, and is usually depicted as weeping over the gory aftermath of the vampire’s predation.

But, there has to be more than just weeping. There must be positive action. When our loving souls see the carnage that has been perpetrated on us ”“ on our Inner Beloved ”“ we may weep for escape from our excruciating pain and shame. But weeping and grieving must lead to gaining knowledge, otherwise our wish for escape will only open the door again to another vampire.

“The longing for oblivion ” must surely be the door through which the vampire is invited into the potential victim’s life; to take it, annihilate it, and transform it into something supernatural, into a strange sort of existence that runs parallel to human life, and yet is irredeemably separate from it, since it feeds on it as its main purpose. In a sense, therefore, the wish for eternal life endowed with superhuman power becomes the greatest sin of the ego. And vampirism then, the punishment of such sin. (Maschetti 1992, 58)

Alice Miller argues in her book “For Your Own Good,” that the quest to understand the roots of heinous acts is in no way an effort to excuse them. It is the only approach ”“ along with exposure – to the nightmare of an interaction with a psychopath that may result in the prevention of similar acts by others.