Fans of gothic literature and horror films aren't the only people who are familiar with the character of Renfield, as he made his way into pop psychology. Psychiatrists started focusing on behavior they began calling clinical vampirism, eventually dubbing it Renfield's Syndrome. Richard Noll, author of "Bizarre Diseases of the Mind," suggests that the symptoms of those suffering from the condition resemble the Renfield character's quirks.
In his lecture given at Penn State University in 2013, Noll outlined the symptoms of someone suffering from the illness. While he spoke about some kind of trauma surrounding blood and sex before puberty, he focused on the person's struggle with consuming blood later in life. They even go far enough to consume the blood of animals, just like Renfield in the novel.
The character has a long and storied history that started in the 1920s and stayed relevant in the Dracula stories for a century. Of course, there is no way that someone could ever out-overact a character when teamed with Nicolas Cage, but Nicholas Hoult gives his all in his portrayal of the reimagined Renfield.
