One rule always applies when psychic vampires haunt our personal relationships: we protect ourselves against vampirism in our relationships whenever we pull back our projections of the inner Beloved and become aware of how our projection reflects the parts of ourselves that we have denied. Let me describe this process by telling you about what a friend of mine did when she finally grew tired of the vampirism she suffered as a result of projecting her inner Beloved onto external men.
First of all, this gracious woman accepted some advice from a nosy friend (ahem) and decided to pull back her projections and seek the Beloved within. This meant that
whenever she was caught in the throes of passion, particularly when the passion could not be lived out, my friend reminded herself that she was, in fact, brushing up against a sweet
projection of her inner Beloved. In order to get to know her inner Beloved better (and, incidentally, ease the pain of her impossible passion), my friend attempted to become the person by whom she was mesmerized. Usually, this meant manifesting in herself the traits which she found most admirable in the object of her affections. Of course, when her obsession was one of hatred, she grudgingly recognized that she had to identify in herself some manifestation, however subtle, of the traits that she detested in the other person.
Either way, the purpose of my friend's exercise was to reclaim as her own the traits that she had projected onto an external person. Not only did this resolve her obsession and give her access to the full power of her psyche, but she found it a powerful way to ward off psychic vampires. The more she pulled back her projections and mined her own psychic gold, the less likely she was to select vampiric men in her desperation to find a projection screen.
Although mining her psychic gold was highly rewarding, my friend found that, like the mining of literal gold, it entailed a lot of difficult, unpleasant work in the dark. In
plumbing the depths of her psyche for traits that she had previously denied in herself, she had to brave the reasons that she denied those traits in the first place. Because rejected traits are usually stuffed into unconsciousness along with one's earliest, most painful emotions, my friend's trait-reclaiming exercises were often dreary little picnics. What's more, once she had redeemed her intrinsic power, my friend had to see her external projections for what they were smoke and mirrors that disguised her lovers' imperfect human reality. Initially, this new perspective dropped my friend into despair, since it forced her give up her illusion of a Perfect Lover in exchange for a simple, flawed mortal.
Her awakening was no easier when her projection had been a negative one, for she had to give up her illusion of a Detestable Fiend for a simple, blundering human being.
When we are in a vampiric relationship, we are usually ravenous for love (which is why we are being vampiric in the first place), and unfamiliar with love's reality (since it's hard to be familiar with something we have never known). Thus, when we pull back our projections, we are likely to feel as if we have been dropped to a pit of oblivion, for there is seldom more than mutual feeding behind the projections. This is exactly how my friend felt. And since her socialization (like so many of ours) had taught her to view the outer reality as the only reality, the realization that her images of her external lovers were mostly composed of her projections made my friend feel as if she would never meet another man she could love. At all. Ever. The truth was that her inner Beloved was, in many ways, more present for her than the men onto whom she had projected Belovedness (though it took her a while to believe that truth). What's more, once my friend had
discovered her inner Beloved, she found that she could savor his reflection (not projection) in real men, whom she no longer felt compelled to love vampirically My friend's initial contact with her inner Beloved came in a dream about an enchanting stranger, and later, in her fantasies about a variety of external men. But the source of her images of the Beloved was not the important part. What was important that becoming familiar with the shape of her inner Beloved enhanced the "reality" of his gifts to her; his words and gestures took on more and more weight as she came to believe in him, which in turn enabled him to show her what it is on the inside that she had been seeking on the outside. When my friend gave me permission to use her story for this book she told me (with some heat) that words like "becoming acquainted with her inner Beloved" were
insufficient to describe the immediacy of her actual experience, and what's more (she said, with greater heat), such words would sound too bland to rival the illusory bliss of vampiric projections. So let me talk a bit about what communion with the inner Beloved can feel like, and how it can lead us into external relationships that are profoundly loving nonprojective and nonvampiric.*
The inner Beloved is an archetypal energy that usually appears to us in the form of a person. We may sense the inner Beloved in a dream or a story or a film or an individual, but the archetype's essence is usually a composite of several images. If we want to know the shape of our inner Beloved, we must first do what my friend did-pull together and contemplate several images of the Beloved that we have projected. Not all such images are the romantic kind; they may be parental, professional, even political. For any type of projection, we should focus on the images of all the people whom we have felt could fill us with self-respect and self-love. Although they may seem unrelated at first, the energies we perceive in them will eventually coalesce into a coherent, though complex, entity who will symbolize our personal archetype of the Beloved.
For my friend, this work of getting acquainted with her inner Beloved initially felt like an exercise in pure fantasy. As her Beloved eventually assumed a more concrete shape, he came to offer her a wealth of information and support. My friend found that all his input was extremely important and lovingly framed, though some of it was initially difficult for her to accept-sometimes because it showed her something negative that she didn't want to see, and sometimes because it showed her something positive that she was afraid to believe was real. In every case, however, my friend's inner Beloved presented his truth with unswerving love and deep compassion. In the end, he became her constant
companion-the lover who would never desert or betray her, who would never deceive or use her, who would never dominate or exploit her. (When any of these ugly behaviors seemed to be creeping into her Beloved fantasies, she quickly checked for vampires.) And the more "real" my friend's inner Beloved became to her, the more he was able to guide her to external men who resembled him, while his love for her kept her from clinging projectively to the men she found. Of course, this process was a bit trickier than it sounds.
For example, my friend initially tried to find her inner Beloved without any outside input, and she was seduced by her inner vampire into believing that he, a demon lover, was her Beloved. My friend found that she was less likely to go astray once she solicited the help of a therapist, which makes sense, since outside observers can often give us a clearer view of our inner Beloved, just as they can for an outer loved one. Because vampires always try to isolate their prey, a third person can help break their hypnotic spell. This may be why vampiric people like to isolate themselves with their victims away from the intruding eyes of the victim's friends.
Once my friend became acquainted with her true inner Beloved-that is, once he seemed more solid and "real"-she began the second stage of their relationship. She now took a bit of time each day to become her inner Beloved, and another bit of time to commune with her inner Beloved. Again this initially felt to her like an exercise in perpetual fantasizing, but then she said to herself, "Isn't this what I do anyway when I am smitten with an
* This issue has also been discussed by the Jungian analyst Linda Leonard in her book On the Way to the Wedding: Transforming the Love Relationship, and I urge those interested in doing more work with the inner Beloved to read Leonard's insightful discussion.
external lover? I'm constantly thinking, 'What would he say, think, do, feel, or advise in any given situation, about any given topic? And how would I respond?' " Only this time, my friend was not imagining how an external person might respond. This time, her Beloved actually was all she imagined.
Because our inner Beloveds usually look like a person of the same sex as the people onto whom we have been projecting Belovedness, the inner Beloved of my friend appeared to her as a man, while the inner Beloved of the physician I described earlier would more likely appear to him as a woman. Although these human forms are common images of the Beloved, they are by no means its only forms. I have seen clients in whom the Beloved initially appeared in the form of an animal, or a tree or a geological structure. And our inner Beloved may be reflected in political, religious, professional, or familial
relationships, as well as in our love relationships with a mate. To find our personal forms of the inner Beloved, we must first identify the ways in which we expect our lovers, parents, bosses, or leaders to fix or complete us-the ways in which they seem to be more divine than we feel we are ourselves. Seeking those qualities in our own psyches, we then weave our new recognition of our own divinity into a coherent shape of the inner
Beloved, using our projective fantasies about our external lovers, parents, bosses, or leaders.
In whatever form or venue our inner Beloved is reflected, he or she bears the same attitude toward us. The Beloved is a being who honors our sacredness, inspires and protects us, offers us dignity and devotion, and helps us to transform ourselves into the people we were born to be. No wonder we seek the Beloved so fiercely, projecting Belovedness onto any serviceable screen in the external reality. No wonder, too, that anyone who attempts to hold our Beloved projection will inevitably fail at the task. And yet, we wonder, must we forgo all projective love so that we and our loved ones will be safe from psychic vampirism? Must we utterly abandon our search for a Beloved in the external world?