Monstrous infants and vampyric mothers in Bram Stoker's "Dracula"

Bram Stoker's "Dracula" continues to fascinate and horrify audiences, inviting a psychoanalytic explanation. While previous interpretations have emphasized oedipal dynamics and perverse sexuality, this paper proposes that early developmental issues are central. Vampires and the state of being "undead" are representations of intense oral needs, experienced in a context of passivity and helplessness. Aggressive invasion and possession of the other, with a colonization of body and soul, offer a solution to this dilemma but one devoid of true object-relatedness. The imaginative source of the Dracula figure is posited as Stoker's early invalidism and his later idealization of a powerful and charismatic actor. Implicit in the Dracula story are ideas of intrusively experienced "monstrous" babies and intrusively controlling "vampyric mothers". The author offers studies of key passages from "Dracula" in support of this reading, followed by comparative material to illustrate the spectrum of vampyric mothering: a clinical example and excerpts from a modern novel. The horror of the vampire myth is located in the unending internal attachment to a deeply needed but problematic object.