IFS and the Vampire Lestat
What happens when we blend popular media and therapy? Cinematherapy or bibliotherapy are both evidence-based approaches to therapy that utilize the stories we absorb in our media to talk about the stories of our own lives. While Narrative therapy is the most common way we utilize storytelling or “reauthoring” in therapy and bibliotherapy uses literature, none of these have the corner market on stories that allow us to connect to ourselves in a deeper way. I personally love an IFS/Internal Family Systems lens.
As a therapist who also absolutely loves tv with no guilt in my pleasure, I find myself constantly bringing up different characters or storylines from what I am watching in session. My latest obsession? The Vampire Lestat, of course. Watch out, SPOILERS do ensue.
In the AMC television series The Vampire Lestat, the third season of the Anne Rice originated Vampire Chronicles/Interview with a Vampire we see the perspectives shift from lover Louis who told the first two seasons, to his toxic partner of epic proportions Lestat. Lestat has been shown to us before, as the manipulator, the controller, the perfect demonic angel. But in this perspective he’s a lonely, petty, rockstar who is dying for the acclaim he believes he deserves. As he tries to achieve the album that tells his centuries long life, we see flashbacks of his life and more importantly the people from his past that haunt his present.
In these moments where he sits with his maker, his mother, his first lover, and even his childhood stuttering self we see the parts that make up Lestat’s greatest insecurities. In IFS we look at our inner self through the lens of a multi-mind. We have inside of us every person we have been and who we will be, or even parts of us who are influenced by those around us that impacted us the greatest. There are FOUR major players in an Internal Family System. The Self, Firefighters, Managers and Exiles.
The SELF is the part of us that can stay calm, compassionate, curious, confident and connected according to IFS founder Richard Schwartz. Lestat aligns with this part most commonly with Louis, in times where he’s needed to be his protector. He can be incredibly attuned when he’s in this part of himself. This occurs for all of us. We have our higher self who reacts with reason and kindness. The goal is that we can live there more as we do therapeutic work, similar to the Wise Mind in DBT.
Next up is our firefighters, or as I prefer to call them the fire-STARTERS. These are our reactive parts. For Lestat we see this when he crashes his car and leaves it burning, when he decides that the only response to push back is to become violent. Yet more often than not underneath that is the fear for himself, or knowledge that what is happening goes against everything he knows.
Lestat is one Petty Betty and he loves to react in a way to throw everyone through a loop, even flying out a window rather than face the brutal scene he has left in his wake. We also see the firefighter in the ghost of his first lover. The mentally ill Nicolas de Lenfant who could not live as a vampire, and could not be left behind as Lestat loved him too much. Who hasn’t heard their ex’s voice as we try to make ourselves anew?
Third we have our Managers, the ones who want to keep everyone in control. In other modalities, this is called the Inner Critic. We see this in Lestat the perfectionist who won’t accept take after take in the studio, exhausting his band and harming himself for the sake of the work. We see this in Lestat's mother, Gabrielle, who never mothers, only criticizes and abandons. Lestat’s maker also materializes as a manager, someone who holds Lestat hostage to his pain as he runs away and screams at the ghost to leave him be.
As we see each of these characters, I ask as a therapist, who do we relate to? How is our own past leaking into the present through our parts the way Lestat’s does even if it’s with less gusto and drama. We are all of these parts aren’t we? Don’t we each have a part of us that is our mother wound? What can we confront head on as Lestat does when aligns with his SELF energy and steps forward for Louis. When he is willing to go in and see if the waitress is truly their child or just a girl who reminds them of the past? Who are our ghosts running the show?
When Lestat turns and faces these ghosts, he bleeds creativity into his music. This vulnerability enables him to grow into his SELF energy even more. The final version of himself, the EXILE that has been hidden is now seen and held. The young child who stuttered and never fit with his family no longer feels the need to disappear. How do we hold our exile with love and care and compassion? Can this release our self, and allow us to make the life we’ve always dreamed of? I’d like to think so, and I think Lestat would approve.
