Part of the Casswiki article series Psychology and Cassiopaean Experiment
Psychic vampirism (often called “feeding on others” or simply “feeding” in FOTCM parlance) encompasses both psychological manipulation and a sort of psychic game of dominance and exploitation. The physical or psychological part consists of exercising some form of emotional control over another. The psychic or metaphysical part involves depleting another’s life force for one’s own gain.
Characteristics
Feeding is essentially manipulation which seeks to gain some resource from or through another. The object can be the satisfying of some desire, or addiction, or simply to ‘feel better’. Such manipulation always amounts to exerting a form of dominance or control, something which may be very subtle or very obvious, or anywhere in-between.
The human being requires a sort of mental food of impressions and attention. The fact that babies die if they do not get any attention is a clear example. The biological mechanism is genetically programmed to get this food of attention in one way or another. Further, according to this programming, even negative attention is ‘better’ than none.
This basic need can develop into a wide range of manipulative behaviors that seek to feed off of the attention of others. Narcissism is a far-gone example of this. On the other hand, such tendencies do not have to result from deprivation, but can be quite congenital, as with the psychopath.
Feeding of some sort is very common and often happens without conscious intent or knowledge of the participants. It can be felt as either tiredness, irritation, indifference, or excitement or high, or any of many sensations, depending on whether one is the food or the feeder.
In extreme cases, a ‘black magician’ may engage in deliberate physical or mental destruction of a victim as a proof or adjunct to one’s personal power. Most feeding is however much subtler, often encountered in everyday life, and can be done with seemingly good intent.
Feeding most often requires at least passive participation on the part of both parties. The exchange can be more or less imbalanced, but usually there is at least some token compensation from the feeder to the food in order to maintain the relationship. This can consist of various things, depending on what the exploited most desires, is most willing to ‘sell one’s soul for.‘
Dynamics
Emotion is the food in most feeding dynamics. In order not to be food, one should either not give any emotional reaction, or give an entirely unexpected one. This is difficult because people are usually creatures of mechanical habit, and besides, are addicted to reacting emotionally. Being manipulated through pity can, for example, make one feel important, necessary, and noble, increasing one’s subjective feeling of self-importance while one is in fact only being used. The situation of feeding ‘injects’ a certain psychic anesthetic into the food source; a reaction is triggered, so that the actual nature of the interaction becomes masked by some other emotional state.
Often, feeding uses some ‘noble sentiment’ of the victim for leverage. This can be pity for the feeder, a sense of family obligation, a sense of duty to defend the oppressed, any sense of guilt and so forth.
Feeding may also involve using another for material gain, but this is not necessarily the main dynamic on the scale of individuals. (When it occurs, it is in effect another form of ‘energy’ vampirism, because in our world, money represents energy – effort, labor, and the capacity to get things done.) Getting attention and controlling the emotional state of the victim can be more important, and is the most common aspect. Feeding is a clearly self-serving activity. Encouraging the feeding habits of others by being willing food generally advances the cause of service to self.
People can sometimes be addicted to being food, and feeding scenarios involving mutual addiction are a real possibility. Examples include codependency, as well as sadomasochistic relationships.
On the societal scale, material gain becomes a big component of feeding dynamics. Such feeding can be seen in any society where the level of financial inequality is very high. For instance, predatory banking involves gathering the money of people, speculating with the money in a large-scale gamble in the interest of greed, and if this fails, receiving bail-outs at the cost of taxpayers. (Not to mention the creation and growth of debt through loans at interest.) More generally, in large-scale financial feeding, the money of the majority – which represents their energy – is funneled upwards towards the narrow apex of a feeding hierarchy.
Defense
Any defense against being fed upon needs to be based on first considering the possibility of this happening. To detect whether this is taking place, one may disengage from a situation to see if this makes a difference. If this is not possible, one may intensify efforts at self-observation. Symptoms of being fed on generally include emotional reactions or changes in energy levels but since these occur together with decreased interest or ability to think and increased subjectivity, detecting this is problematical.
Cultural or religious conditioning can also often prevent people from standing up for themselves when they are fed off of. Along with detecting the feeding, to defend themselves, people often need to question their ideas about what is ‘normal’, ‘acceptable’, or ‘expected’ from them. Blindly following ideas such as “turn the other cheek”, “give until it hurts”, or that one must always “make nice”, or never say anything ‘negative’, keeps many good-hearted people stuck in situations where they are exploited.
On the part of the feeder, feeding habits of people are usually deeply ingrained, and often unconscious, or in some way tucked aside even if there is awareness of them at some level. Not all predators think of themselves as such. They will usually try to reverse the entire situation if they are confronted with evidence of their behavior. Emotionally or physically disengaging from the dynamic is best. Genuine and lasting change in people is very rare, and never happens without sincere work on their own part. Instead, predatory people often learn new tricks or conditioned responses, or become more stealthy, or fake having ‘changed their ways’.
In the case of a serious, concerted attack, it is often effective not to address the attacker directly but rather to make the whole situation public. Feeding off of others relies to a degree on being done covertly.
Contagiousness and feeding hierarchies
Feeding has a tendency to organize itself into a food chain or pyramid. The one who is fed off of becomes depleted, and in turn seeks to replenish psychic reserves by feeding on others. This is generally the reason why abuse and oppression get passed around.
The myth of the vampire states that victims of vampires become vampires themselves. This is an apt allegory. This does not only mean that they need to compensate for the lost energy by taking it in turn from others. This also means that they in a quite concrete sense adopt the world view of the vampire, with its unique subjectivity and sensation-seeking. In metaphysical terms, one could speak of being drawn into the vortex spiraling towards the thought center of service to self. A vampire has no or little objective self-consciousness. The vampire lives in a constant state of identification with feeding (or the pleasant sensations connected to it) and getting more to satisfy the self’s subjective cravings. When one is in this state one will increasingly not ‘self-remember’ and will have less consciousness for stopping the downward spiral. This is why these dynamics often culminate in a crisis and crash.
Because feeding naturally forms food chains, the human predators are not the ultimate beneficiaries. Rather, the psychic energy gathered in all the personal dramas of feeding tends to be funneled through to the higher density forces of service to self. Their human agents are also food, and they generally undergo a process of psychic decay. This is yet another meaning of the dictum that ‘power corrupts’.
Further reading
- Unholy Hungers
- Character Disturbance
- Women Who Love Psychopaths
- Dispelling Wetiko