The Step from Dysfunction to Evil

In exploring the theme of evil, and it's connection to the relationships I keep replicating in the present I have found an excellent article which uses the story of Count Dracula as a back drop to explain the concept of evil and emotional vampires. The title of this article is:

Therapy For The Victims of Extreme Human Dysfunction and Human Evil: Evil is beyond emotional, psychological and spiritual dysfunction By Dr. Rodney Karr

"Dr. Rodney G. Karr, is a practicing psychologist who has over twenty-five years of experience working with perpetrators, victims and children of such relationships".

I've highlighted excerpts from his article which really spoke to me but encourage a reading of the article in its entirety. Pop culture has reinvented the story of evil as one of the walking dead, humans who have become flesh eating zombies who feed on the rest of us. I have been fascinated -- enthralled by movies like this all my life, documentaries about serial killers; books exploring the mind of tyrants like Hitler, programs exploring the behavior or sociopaths. There is a central theme here and I believe the concept is one and the same.

"Our human ancestors have been dealing with and confronting human evil since the beginning of time. Human myths from various cultures have built into them understandings, perceptions and ways of dealing with evil and evil people.

Dr. Karr has been studying the vampire myths which occur in almost all cultures worldwide. The vampire mythology offers a model of understanding human evil and the relationship between evil people and their victims. It is Dr. Karr’s experience that most; if not all evil people are psychic/emotional vampires. Psychic/emotional vampires are people who are un-whole, who feel incomplete, and who feel an enormous lack or deficit within themselves; people who are very needy and dependant, who do not feel capable of taking care of themselves and surviving by themselves, people who feel a lack of connection to nature, other people, life, creativity, beauty, abundance. These people feel that they must get their support, life force and abundance from others. This is where they become psychic/emotional vampires who, out of desperation to live and a feeling that they are unable to live by their own means are willing to do almost anything to take the life and energy from other people and nature in order to survive.

Psychic/emotional vampires as parents have children in order to create defenseless victims who they can own, control and mold to meet their own survival needs. They literally are willing to drink their children’s emotional blood and spirit and drain them of their life force. This spiritual process manifests itself behaviorally in terms of parents who do not allow their children to individuate or create any healthy boundaries. Such children are raised to meet the needs of their parents. These needs can include sexual needs, emotional needs, companionship needs, control needs, and economic needs. Such parents feel that they have created their children almost as objects and that their children owe them what they want of them. The parent feels a sense of entitlement to use the child in ways that wouldn’t be acceptable to others.

Psychic/emotional vampires as adults become involved in very codependent and symbiotic friendships and relationships. They feel very uncomfortable being alone. Often if a relationship ends they immediately create a new one. They feel uncomfortable with quiet, silence and peace. If someone else isn’t around they normally have the TV, radio or music on or must communicate with someone on a cell phone. Such people would feel very uncomfortable practicing meditation or being in nature. Such people frequently play the victim, are constantly telling other people about their pains and hurts, emotional or physical, and are constantly seeking sympathy and attention.

Frequently such people do not engage in real communication. They have a tendency to talk at people, interrupt others, not listen and keep all the attention on themselves in painful monologues. Successful psychic/emotional vampires develop sophisticated skills of manipulation or control. They may emulate having empathy and emotions in order to manipulate others including tears, anger, and false empathy. However this is all self serving".

Dr. Karr identifies narcissism as a bridge to evil:

"A self-centered/narcissistic person is one who is stuck at an early stage of child development in which everything is perceived as being about the self and for the self. All others are perceived as extensions of oneself, ones needs and wants. This makes such a person extremely dependant upon others and also results in extreme efforts to control and manipulate other people to conform to ones own needs and perceptions. Such a person is constantly being disappointed in others and the outer world for not conforming to their needs and desires. Ultimately this results in a good deal of anxiety, fear and depression. Such a person frequently seeks other deeply wounded people animals or children to control and force into their narcissistic dream.

"The narcissistic dream fantasy of how others and the world should conform to their expectations is a set up for anger and conflict. Such expectations of others and the world are often impossible to be met. This often results in the narcissistic self centered person becoming very angry at others and the world for not conforming to these impossible expectations. It is this anger and rage towards others and the world which may lead the dysfunctional narcissist down the path of becoming an evil person.

"The self centered person almost always blames others and the world for their failures. They then feel that others/the world have harmed them, betrayed them and deserve punishment or payback. The dysfunctional person who becomes evil then feels legitimate in lying, manipulating, abusing emotionally or physically, harming and killing others as a payback for failing or hurting them. Truly evil people have learned how to control and manipulate and hold hostage their victims through threats of violence, actual violence, intimidation, law suits, destruction of property, withholding love and sex, lying about people and destroying their reputations, disclosing secrets such as that someone is gay to their employer, blackmail emotional and material, stalking, etc.

"It is at this point of frustration anger fear and despair that such a damaged, dysfunctional person may take the next step into becoming an evil person. The step into evil from dysfunction involves giving up any sense of values, morals, ethics, goodness, kindness, empathy. Such a person in their process of becoming evil is willing to lie to themselves and others distort and blame others, manipulate, harm, hurt, or kill, do whatever’s necessary to control and force the other into meeting their self centered needs. The innocent and weak are particularly susceptible to the manipulations and controls of such evil, psychic/ emotional vampires. This may include children, animals, and emotionally and physically challenged people.

"Such a person has moved to the level of becoming a predator. Such a predator might prey upon others, physically, sexually, spiritually, economically. A successful evil psychic/emotional vampire has become very adept at acting as if they are a loving, kind person. They are like a Venus fly trap with sweet honey inside to attract the bee. Once inside the victim is trapped and devoured. This successful vampire also develops intuitive abilities to sense and perceive wounded, susceptible victims.

People who are raised in dysfunctional and evil families have been programmed to fulfill the needs of evil, narcissistic parents. They are trained to be naive and vulnerable to other evil persons. Sexual predators for example frequently are able to read and recognize children who are wounded and susceptible to their predation Psychologists have noted that people who have been heavily physically and emotionally abused as children usually recreate abusive friendships and relationships with abusive and evil people. This is not an accident rather evil people can readily recognize potential victims and potential victims are often attracted to them. The mythos of the Transylvanian vampire Count Dracula expresses beautifully the deep and intense relationship between the vampire and his/her symbiotic victim/host".

Dr. Karr, confirms and supports my belief that evil is a disease that is supported by both the perpetrator and the victim.

"It has been Dr. Karr’s experience as a psychologist who has over twenty-five years of experience working with perpetrators, victims and children of such relationships, that there needs to be a shift in perception from an emphasis upon the perpetrator victimizing a victim to a systemic approach seeing it as a relationship between a perpetrator and a victim in which the victim is part of the system. He is especially speaking of long term, abusive relationships in which the victim chooses to stay or seems unable to leave despite knowing how destructive the relationship is and how abusive their partner is. Dr. Karr believes that a good deal more research needs to be done concerning the hypnotic process between the psychic vampire and their victim. Most people in our culture don’t understand how or why victims may stay in horribly abusive relationships and even allow their children to be horribly abused for many years without leaving. Dr. Karr believes that the vampire mythology offers some insights into understanding the full powerlessness and state of disassociation which many victims of long term abuse enter into and enables them to continue, despite being emotionally and physically abused.

"The emotional/psychic vampire like Count Dracula, must in their process of taking control of their victim, gradually isolate and disconnect their victim from anyone, anything, any organization, and beliefs which would interfere with the vampire’s control, manipulation and hypnosis of their victim. It is classic that perpetrator/abusers begin their relationships with their future victim being very romantic, giving, loving, and even spoiling. This process hooks the victim personality who usually has very low self esteem is desperate for love attention and nurturing. Once the victim is hooked then there is a slow, diabolical process which involves a shift from giving, loving, nurturing, idealizing into criticism, judgment and blame. This interim phase or process is a test of how far the psychic vampire can go in taking control of their victim.

Dr. Karr, I believe correctly labels those who become evil as original victims of evil themselves.

"The vampire mythos points to the reality that most evil people became such by staying in a relationship while being victimized by an evil person. The vampire mythos is very core in our western culture to coming to an understanding of human evil. It is a process and that process begins with being a victim. Not all victims are evil but all evil people have felt like victims or been victims. Therefore it is the hypothesis of Dr. Karr that in seeking to develop a treatment for evil one must begin early in the process before the person has truly become evil. I feel that once a person has become truly evil they have given up their humanity and are hopeless to treat. Victims of evil who are on the path towards becoming evil themselves may be helped. It is therefore important to identify people who are victims of evil or feel they are victims and begin working with them around issues of being a victim. Psychic/emotional vampires feel very threatened if or when their victim/host have connections with other people, family, friends, even interests outside of the vampire relationship. It is characteristic of abuser/perpetrators to work consistently and diabolically to destroy their victim’s relationships with and contact with anyone or anything outside of their relationship.

Dr. Karr illustrates the path to evil using two of the main characters of Bramm Stoker's Dracula:

"In Bramm Stoker’s Dracula (1897) there are two important victims of Count Dracula.

"Lucy is characteristic of a person who succumbs to the whiles of the vampire and chooses to become one without resistance. She then feeds upon innocent children until she is destroyed with a stake through her heart by her father and fiancé.

"Mina represents the victim of the vampire/evil person who resists becoming a vampire/evil person. The vampire/evil person attempts to confuse and control the victim through hypnosis/lies. Mina is helped to resist the power of the vampire and becoming evil by Dr.Van Helsing (who symbolizes a healer, teacher, and spiritual guide/counselor, friend who recognizes the evil and helps the victim to transcend it)

"The victim decides whether they wish to pursue the path of evil or not. Most victims simply die at this point and don’t become vampires. On a spiritual level many people are destroyed physically or emotionally by the vampire. It takes a good deal of strength to become fully evil and most people aren’t strong enough."

Dr. Karr advises that intense intervention is needed to heal evil:

"Adult victims of Evil who have survived at some point seek emotional, physical and spiritual healing from psychotherapists, ministers, priests and rabbis, physicians and others. It is Dr. Karr’s experience that the toxic nature of victimization by Evil is so severe that a person needs a professional healer/spiritual guide to assist them. Evil is so powerful that one cannot heal from its wounds by oneself but rather requires the help and love of a healer as well as a healthy/healing community. A person can survive in a wounded stasis alone but to truly heal a healer and healing community must be found."

In the past, I have readilly identified my parents, siblings, in fact my entire family as being extremely toxic and dysfunctional -- to the point that I have now come to the conclusion that they are detrimental to my over-all well being and mental health.

I am now prepared, however, to state that my family is infected with the disease of evil. I, through the grace of God, somehow dissassociated enough to resist that evil and so spared my soul. I had to protect that innocent, loving, good part of myself from the evil of my family or I would have become just like them. To survive in my household, certain parts of my personality took on aspects of their dysfunctional, evil behaviors and my healing journey has been trying to at once, to relinquish the evil, dysfunctional behaviors and embrace and reconnect to the whole, loving, good parts of myself I locked a way.

In some small way it's stranglely ironic, isn't it? I had to become lost to myself, to save myself so that I could one day find myself, otherwise I would have been lost completely.

For what shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and suffer the loss of his soul? ~ Mark 8:36