From the author: “Bulletin of Psychoanalysis” - 2010. - N 2. - P. 73-82. You are my personal brand of heroin.S. Mayer. Twilight The name “vegetarian vampires” was born by analogy with the heroes of the popular “vampire saga” “Twilight” by the American writer Stephenie Meyer. This is a series of novels dedicated to the love of an ordinary 17-year-old schoolgirl and a vampire boy, whose age by human standards has exceeded the century mark. The main character belongs to a clan of vampires who call themselves “vegetarians”, because... They feed not on human blood, but on the blood of animals. With the help of a “vegetarian” diet, vampires manage to control their thirst; they are not dangerous to people. In addition to the traditional attributes of vampires - immortality, beauty, enormous physical strength - "vegetarian vampires" have paranormal abilities. They can read minds, foresee the future, control other people's emotions, etc. Despite the mutual feeling, the vampire young man in love suffers cruelly. The blood of his beloved turned out to be incredibly attractive to him. The smell of the girl makes him extremely thirsty and pushes him to attack. The vampire understands that he is a threat to his beloved, tries to break up with her, but cannot bring himself to leave, showing all the signs of love addiction. In separation from her, everything seems meaningless to him. He is gnawed by anxiety, tormented by jealousy, fears that an accident could happen to the girl at any moment, he needs to constantly see her, know what she is thinking about, what she is doing. But self-control comes at the cost of enormous effort. Trying to curb the monster within himself, the young vampire fights fiercely with his nature. Out of fear for the girl's safety, he not only suppresses his hunger, but also refuses to have sexual relations with her. However, the vampire refuses all the girl's requests to bite her and turn her into a vampire, because he does not want to destroy her immortal soul. She manages to achieve what she wants only in exchange for marriage vows. Soon after the wedding, the girl becomes pregnant, but the child turns out to be half-vampire and destroys the mother from the inside. During childbirth, she almost dies from severe injuries, but her husband saves her by turning her into a vampire. By becoming a vampire, a girl gains immortality, eternal love and supernatural powers [8]. Like many other vampire stories, Twilight is a variation of the classic fairy tale story of Beauty and the Beast, which exists in one version or another in many cultures. The fairy tale is known to the Russian-speaking reader as presented by S. T. Aksakov under the title “The Scarlet Flower: The Tale of the Housekeeper Pelageya” [2]. From a psychoanalytic point of view, the plot of Beauty and the Beast can be read as a coming-of-age story of a teenage girl, overcoming conflicts about her own and men’s sexuality. Through union with the Beast, the girl turns into a woman and finds a husband [3, 7]. Love that became hunger - Explain why you hunt animals and not people?...- I don’t want to be a monster!...- But animals aren’t enough for you?...- This is probably like replacing meat with soy. We jokingly call ourselves vegetarians. The blood of animals does not completely satisfy hunger, or in our case, thirst, but it is enough to maintain life.S. Mayer. Twilight. Any text allows for multi-level reading. Let's dwell on the theme of hunger, tormenting a vampire in love and forcing him to protect his beloved from himself. This motive, following R. Fairbairn, can be called love hunger [6, p. 28]. It is known that food is one of the most powerful sensual pleasures. The very first satisfaction in human life is associated with the absorption of food. Feeding for a baby is at the same time the first experience of social and love relationships in which the possession of an object means its incorporation into one’s own body. If the child’s normal needs for food, care, and emotional contact with the mother are not adequately satisfied, they intensify, acquiring an aggressive nature, and begin to causefear. “Vegetarian vampires” who seek therapy experience a hunger so all-consuming, desperate, insatiable that, for fear of destroying the object of love, the best option for them seems to be abandonment of the relationship. What brings them to us are the consequences of such a decision - isolation, loneliness, distancing from one’s feelings, from the body, perceiving oneself as an automaton, a robot, emptiness, boredom, insensibility, experiencing oneself as worthless, the feeling that life is passing by. At the same time, hunger itself in these patients can be buried “under a thick, heavy blanket of protection” [9]. Very often they are isolated from their gluttony, projecting it onto the world around them. As a result, the outside world is perceived as persecuting, “devouring,” “enslaving,” and interaction with people is perceived as leading to “disappearance,” “dissolution,” and loss of one’s own individuality. Thus, 36-year-old patient A. in the first year of therapy as follows described her difficulties: “I’m like an alien from a science fiction story. The aliens met a ship of earthlings in space, but their planet had an atmosphere of fluorine. And fluorine is very poisonous to people, so they could only communicate through special protective glass. They have been looking for brothers in mind for a long time, but all the time they come across only oxygen planets.” Patient B., 32 years old, first year of therapy: “I understand that I came to you myself, I need help. But I’m afraid that you will gain access to control my consciousness and can somehow unnoticeably influence me, my views and beliefs, which I value very much. Replace, for example, my thoughts with your own or those that are correct from the point of view of society and turn me into an ordinary, average person." Patient V., 25 years old, in the first year of therapy said: “I live, as it were, in such a ball - you can’t see me from it, but I can see everyone. From my sphere, I observe other people as experimental subjects, I study how they live, what they say, but it’s as if I’m not there. The ball is meant to keep people at a distance, because if I’m with someone, I immediately disappear, I’m not there, there’s only this person. True, when nothing happens for a long time, it becomes boring. But as soon as I can become friends with someone, I get rid of everyone.” When studying the biographical data of these patients, attention is drawn to numerous traumatic events in the first months of their life, as well as the specific features of the attitude of their parents, especially their mother, towards them. Often these are children born as a result of an unplanned pregnancy, often after repeated abortions, against the background of financial difficulties, family conflicts, and divorce. A mother’s negative attitude towards pregnancy was often accompanied by complications during pregnancy and childbirth, problems with breastfeeding the child. The mother’s attitude towards “vegetarian vampires” was characterized by obvious or hidden emotional rejection, psychological rejection of the child, the feeling that he was “not the same”, “not such". Emotional abandonment of the child was often accompanied by the physical absence of the mother. The life histories of these patients contain information about early sudden separations from the mother during the neonatal period, hospitalizations, multiple motherhood with frequent changes of caregivers, etc. The lack of emotional involvement could be combined with an authoritarian parental attitude, strict control of the child’s entire life, exploitation of the patient in interests of one or both parents. Often the parental pair consisted of a rejecting parent of the same sex and a seducing, boundary-violating parent of the opposite sex. The tightrope walker's path I knew that the moment would come when I would say something or you would see something that would be beyond the acceptable. And you will run away screaming loudly...I will not hold you back. I even want this to happen because then I will no longer be a threat to you. But I also want to be with you. Two desires that cannot be reconciled... S. Mayer. Twilight. When “vegetarian vampires” come for a consultation, a commonlack of vitality in their appearance. This makes them vaguely similar to the “ghosts in the flesh” or “living dead” that vampires are traditionally portrayed as. At the same time, their intelligence, vitality, high sensitivity, rich inner life are endearing, and their suffering, hidden under the mask of alienation, evokes sympathy, a desire to get closer, to help. However, their conflicts associated with passivity, dependence, acceptance of help from the very beginning beginnings create serious difficulties in therapy, cause powerful countertransference responses in the analyst and often lead to dead ends in treatment. The dramatic story of their life is inevitably reproduced in the transference. On the one hand, “vegetarian vampires” are looking for contact with an analyst. On the other hand, they are deeply convinced that, due to some inexplicable “badness” of theirs, they are unbearable for their environment and cannot be accepted or understood by anyone. Expecting disappointment and rejection, these patients try their best to avoid a situation where their well-being, understanding, and survival would depend on someone else. The prospect of abandoning these defenses and confronting childhood anxieties and fears seems extremely threatening and provokes desperate resistance. This period can be very long, challenging the analyst's patience and his ability to contain. Patients, due to their deep ambivalence, can remain a “static closed system” for a long time [6, p. 294-300], unable to either accept the analyst’s help or interrupt therapy. This can manifest itself in a variety of forms, for example, in a persistent desire to devalue the therapist's efforts. By identifying during therapy with psychoanalytic knowledge, "vegetarian vampires" soon become quite sophisticated in psychological matters. Patients compete with the therapist, criticize him, and deny the meaning and role of therapy in their lives. The content of the analytic hour is an intellectual discussion of abstract issues, monotonous nagging complaints, dissatisfaction with the lack of progress in treatment, doubts that the analyst can be useful to them, regular messages about the intention to interrupt therapy. At the same time, the “vegetarian vampire” is much afraid of a good relationship with the analyst more than bad ones. Any improvement in well-being, awareness of the need for a therapist causes anxiety, is perceived as dangerous and threatening and is immediately canceled. Thus, patient A., 36 years old, said in the second year of therapy: “I don’t understand why I come to you, it doesn’t matter.” is changing! But it would be much worse if you suddenly had something I needed. I would simply disappear, only my mouth would remain. No normal person can stand this!” Patient G., 23 years old, third year of therapy: “It’s like in the song: if you don’t have a house, it won’t be destroyed by fire, if you don’t have a dog, your neighbor won’t poison her, if you don’t have a wife, no one will poison her.” won't take you away. You live like a beggar - there is nothing, nothing to rejoice at. But if there is nothing, there is nothing to lose, no one can take anything away from me or hurt me.” The analytical process becomes frozen and lifeless, and there is a feeling of lack of contact with the patient. In countertransference, the analyst may experience increasing powerlessness, confusion, hopelessness, irritation, boredom, drowsiness, and feeling worthless, paralyzed, and overwhelmed. At the same time, patients do not stop treatment, continuing to regularly come to sessions, which is sometimes the only marker that they are looking for help. In other cases, patients quickly establish a positive relationship with the analyst, without outwardly disturbing the psychoanalytic situation. These are the “ideal” patients - nice, helpful, attentive, with a good sense of humor. They demonstrate a willingness to cooperate, willingly provide material (for example, descriptions of dreams) that they think might be of interest to the therapist, and accept his interpretations. At the same time, their well-being and external life situation remain practically unchanged. In therapythey carefully avoid discussing emotionally significant topics, contacting their vulnerable child part, recognizing and reliving the mental pain that lives within them. Another unconscious driving force of theirs is the feeling of guilt for their hunger. Patients perceive the therapist as an “empty mother” from their childhood, and themselves as an “unbearable burden”, they fear “revenge” and rejection for the “damage” that they can cause to the analyst by accepting his help. They begin to “deliver” interesting stories, “take care” of the analyst, “take care” of him, often showing outstanding sensitivity to the therapist’s conflicts. An increase in trust in the therapist, an increase in the ability to accept his help, occurs slowly and gradually. At the stage when channels of communication with the analyst open in the “closed system” that the patient represented, a sharp increase in anxiety and another retreat as a result of the actualization of early traumatic experiences are possible. Patient B., 32 years old, first year of therapy, described his state: “I am something like a medieval castle, where no one could get in - the gates are locked, guards, bridges are raised. And suddenly I discovered that you now have a secret passage there. It's like breaking the rules that you set for yourself. Like in the movie “Alien” - the main character opened the floodgates with her own hands, and this creature ended up on the ship and then destroyed everyone.” If the therapist manages to create the necessary atmosphere of trust, the patient’s early unmet needs are “unfrozen.” An intense dependence on the analyst develops, which in its intensity and urgency resembles the infant's need for its mother. This is a very tense period in therapy, which can become a serious test for the analyst. Great difficulties are created by the patients’ demandingness, intense desire to merge with the analyst, resistance to the experience of separation, unusually acute and painful reactions to any frustration (“primary agonies” by D. Winnicott) with fear of death, decay, a feeling of falling into emptiness, and serious depressive episodes [5 ], outbursts of rage. The analyst in countertransference may feel empty, irritated, want to withdraw, feel that he is forced to provide himself to the patient as a donor, that he is “disappearing,” being “sucked out,” “devoured.” Necessary conditions for the patient to discover these needs in himself and begin to gradually realize them are the analyst’s acceptance of this kind of transference, his ability to be in the position of a “good enough mother” [4], to provide the patient with enough time and a reliable and safe environment for meeting with oneself. To summarize, we can say that the therapy of “vegetarian vampires” is reminiscent of the children’s game “Tightrope Walker.” To give the patient in an analytical situation the opportunity to find and accept himself, the analyst has to balance in a narrow “corridor”: to be at the optimal distance, avoiding both excessive approach and excessive distance, empathize with the patient and be tolerant of his suffering, and avoid both excessive confrontation , and excessive sympathy. The analyst must be reliable, accessible but not intrusive, sensitive to countertransference, including his anger, and able to control his feelings, capable of satisfying the patient's significant early needs and their optimal frustration. And if the therapist is seduced by the idea of ​​​​helping this special patient and he manages to survive with him, the conditions are created for the emergence of a “new beginning” [1, p. 211-240; 8, p.164]. Literature Balint M. Basic defect: Therapeutic aspects of regression. M.: “Cogito-Center”, 2002. Bednenko G. Beauty and the Beast: social-role and intrapsychic analysis of the fairy tale. [Electronic resource] URL: http://flogiston.ru/articles/therapy/beauty_beast (access date: 01/30/2011). Bednenko G. Modern vampiriana: new mythology. [Electronic resource] URL: http://flogiston.ru/articles/therapy/vampire (access date:: 30.01.2011).