Customer Reviews

Unholy Hungers: Encountering the Psychic Vampire in Ourselves & Others

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The reviewer who declared this book to be only .11% about vampyres is probably talking about it from a pagan historic point of view and not seeing it in current psychological terms. I have known many "vampires" in my life, the first one being an older friend around whom I constantly felt exhausted. She didn't know she was taking my energy, and it took me awhile to realize that it was really a problem. I ended the friendship without giving her a chance, because I didn't know how else to handle it at the time. Here are other practical ways in which you can tell you are being "sucked dry": Every time you leave a certain person you feel depressed, or they constantly make you angry, or they make you unhappy with your life when you were actually pleased with it before. The key is to compare how you felt before interacting with them, with how you feel afterward and to see if it's a pattern. Then look to see if you feel that way with just them or with a lot of different people (indicating it might be a different problem with you). This book will help you identify the different types of energy drainers/vampires using stories as symbols. I personally relate better to more practical examples, descriptions of specific relationships and different ways to deal with them, for example, rather than fables or movies. And I would have liked more focus on methods of dealing with each type within its respective chapter. But if you've suspected but never dealt with the possibility of yourself or others vampiring, then this is a good book to read.

When I first purchased Unholy Hungers, I wanted to understand particularly the particularly virulent behavior of an acquaintance. After reading several pages, I found the book dangerous in that anyone disliked might easily be labeled "vampiric."

A few months later, I picked up the volume again, this time with a willingness to encounter the vampiric in myself. Hort's keen insight revealed itself to me immediately and brought light, compassion, and health into the darkest corners of my being. It's a brave work, her book, and I thank her.

I'm not exactly sure what to say, but given how much this book is helping me I felt compelled to say something. I received this book as a Yule present from a concerned friend, and I was initially skeptical since I'd had run ins with "real vampyres" and therefore had a lot of misconceptions about the concept. I'm glad I used my better judgement and read it.

For anyone who's tired of being drained dry by their relationships, for anyone who's come to believe that love is nothing but pain, for anyone who's ever been guilted into a relationship, for anyone who tries to help people but only keeps getting hurt in the process, this book is required reading. It's worth its weight in gold.

The only people who don't like this book are the psychic vampires who prey on nurturing people. This book opened my eyes and set me free! I recommend it to everyone I know along with Martha Stout's "Myth of Sanity," "The Sociopath Next Door," Hare's "Without Conscience," "Snakes in Suits," and Lobaczewski's "Political Ponerology". If you never read anything else in your life, read this short list of books for your own protection!

Having said that, let me mention the failings of the book. Like all Jungians, Hort believes that everyone has a soul and everyone can equally be a "vampire" so to say. Well, yes, a person who has been raised in a pathological environment - that is, "bitten by the vampire" - can certainly exhibit vampiric traits, but there IS a larger archetype that Hort - and other Jungians - miss completely: the Psychopath.

This book is a great example of an opportunity to say something that would really help society that was missed or ignored. Hort describes psychopathy perfectly (and pathological behavior among normal people who have been pathologized by the psychopathic norms of our society) and then semanticizes it.

Instead of really educating people about personality disorders and pathology, she suggests that everyone has the archetype of the vampire waiting in the shadows and we only need the right or wrong set of triggers to set it off. That's Bozo Psychology 101!

While I really like some Jungian ideas, their refusal to come down to earth and call a spade a spade is unbelievably frustrating.

Nevertheless, we can use stories and archetypes to analyze what we experience and what we see in ourselves and others. For that reason, I highly recommend this book with the caveat that you keep in mind that what you are reading is a description of psychopathy and its effects on normal people and that the real vampire is the psychopath and he/she is born that way.

This book was a great combination of depth psychology and practical how-to applications, the genre of Carol Pearson's Hero Within and Awakening the Heros Within. The author uses examples of Dracula, Silence of the Lambs, Snow White, Dorian Gray, and The Firm, among others, to illlustarate various vampiric relationships. It also gives specific directions for relasing oneself from the grip of vampiric realtionships

"The Beast has been with us from the beginning of time", writes Barbara Hort, and though she goes on to talk about vampiric characteristics we all share with the monster, there is an "omission": she does not mention the Psychopath, a human-looking-like being, but utterly inhuman in that it lacks the one characteristic of humanness - conscience (For more on psychopaths, read Martha Stout's Sociopath Next Door and Kleckley's Mask of Sanity). And that monster has been with us from the beginning of time, but we can't see him (looks just like us) or understand him (his emotional substratum so unlike anything from our reality), thus infecting our minds with his own mindset, gaining little by little control over the state and national affairs, media and economy of the globe, a process excellently described in Lobaczewski's classic, Political Ponerology. The Vampire has bitten us and we too have lost our humanness, turning into cold blooded unfeeling, feeding beings. Hort's book however, is excellent in teaching the fundamentals of protecting oneself from feeding, and how to reclaim the blood bumping human heart in our chest.

"Unholy Hungers" revealed Barbara Hort's most intriguing study on the dark psychological archetype of what we would know as a "Vampire." In this study, she is looking at the psychic vampires, who are very much like everyone else as they are the people who thirst for power, robbing other individuals of their energies. Hort's work showed how easily we can be caught into the psychic vampire's grasp, and this is important because it showed our weaknesses and strengths during our interaction with people.

Throughout our lives, we can choose what trait we can act on and what trait we choose not to act on, but we cannot deny any traits of ourselves, which are considered to be our "shadows." According to this book, the most traits "of any loved one are always the traits, good or bad, that we don't acknowledge in ourselves - our shadows" (p. 207). Our shadows are our traits that we don't even know about. This is the most important point to which we would need to discover some hidden aspects about ourselves.

Hort also addressed the issue of psychic vampires and the truth behind them. From this book, I would like to stress out two most important points: psychic vampires and archetypes. Psychic vampires are commonly known to be the people who drain other individuals of their vital energies. These may be our loved ones, co-workers, friends, or even a stranger just passing by. Hort pointed out two ways to know if we have been in a presence of a vampire: "the first is a feeling of shameful insufficiency...in this state, we feel that our flaws make us unworthy of life, love, and simple human respect...[and] the yearning for replenishment is the second symptom of having encountered a psychic vampire, and it usually is experienced as a hunger for more" (p. 15-6). When we were in the presence of a psychic vampire, we also run the risk of becoming one ourselves. The desire for more energy will compel us to manipulate other individuals and rob them of their energy. This will engage us to use exploitation, which focuses on satisfying our cravings at another people's expense (p. 18-19). This is critical for us to be aware of.

Secondly, Jung's model of an archetype is the important part of this book. According to Jung via Hort, "every human psyche is composed of basic elements called archetypes...[which are] constellations of energies or traits that make up our personalities...[and] the energies of an archetype will influence what we do, but even more importantly, it will influence how we do it" (p. 4 - 5). Hort called this type of archetype a "vampire" as relevant to her study. Readers will see from this book that there are great deal of examples and tales to illuminate the importance of the vampire archetype. The one important point that we should be aware of is when the vampire archetype becomes active in ourselves, we would feel "compelled to pursue the psychic exploitation of others, driven by the vampire's demonic assistants, fear and contempt" (p. 19). In order to deactivate this archetype in us, we must be reflective both in ourselves and others. We would need to maintain our consciousness as a way to reflect our light back to the darkness of the vampire, which would become deactivated. Given that we are living in a narcissistic society, we are constantly being exposed to having our vampire archetype activated. We also need to be aware of the archetype's influences on us before we blindly fall prey to the vampire's grasp.

I cannot stress enough how important "Unholy Hungers" is for everyone. This book is strongly recommended.

Do you feel drained when you are around certain people?

This book tells, in easy to understand terminology, just what is happening. It shows how certain people really are vampires. They drain our energy and make us feel tired. Not only that, we ourselves could be doing the same thing to others without knowing it.

This book can show you what to look for in others, and yourself, and help you to overcome the vampire in both.

(Those who don't think you should read this book may have an ulterior motive. Knowledge protects us from their feeding.)

This book is stunning. It helped me understand how my wives devoured me. It gave me a way to understand screwed up relationships -- with everyone -- including corporate vampires, sucking the soul out of our society.

You HAVE to read this book.

What an amazing read this is! I've read a lot of psychology books, but this is certainly one of the best.
The book explains how and why people drain others of their vital energy, and how to protect yourself against these psychic vampires. I found the book to be very well explained, using myths, archetypes and even contemporary films to illustrate how the vampire operates. Highly recommended!