MBTI Type: ISFJ
Renfield just wants a normal life, and at one point, tries to convince Dracula that they should calm down, stop hunting people so openly, and try to fit in more, so they can have a normal life in the current day. Ironic from the man who is still wearing a Victorian suit! Others have to push him to modernize, get his own apartment, clean his fingernails, and brush his hair, because he’s gotten so used to doing nothing but his masters’ bidding. He filters things through his own experiences with them, cautioning others from listening to Dracula (saying he promises power, and then you wind up “his slave”) and begging Rebecca not to trust him to resurrect her sister, since he knows there will be strings attached. He breaks away from his servitude for a short time, and wants to be a normal “domestic” person – including making people in his apartment complex like him by being sweet, friendly, kind, good-natured, helpful, and polite. He expresses his feelings in a group and has no trouble articulating them, and is quite good at comforting others. Part of his decision to only hunt “bad people” (his boss needs “innocents” to return to full power) is a way he can bypass his heart and his feelings for others, while also making moral judgments against them (these people are bad, because they hurt and subjugate others in my group). Renfield struggles to get out of his same-ness rut, and to think that his life could ever be any different; it takes someone else to point out to him that he doesn’t have to serve if he doesn’t want to, and he could simply walk away from his boss forever.
Enneagram: 6w5
Renfield judges himself for his amoral behavior, and tries to rationalize it away by seeking victims for Dracula who are “bad people” so that he can feel okay with helping his monstrous boss return to full power. But he is so “co-dependent” in his own words that it doesn’t dawn on him to turn against, betray, or just walk away from his “master” and leave him to not return to full power. He, quite rightfully, is terrified of his boss’ violent tendencies and wants to spare others that fate, but also doesn’t want to die himself. Until he meets his support group, Renfield has lived a life of isolation and self-rationalizing, insisting that he is not to blame for his problems and refusing to deal with the loss of his own family years earlier. It’s a huge shift for him to go from cowed obedience to strong determination to stand on his own two feet and do “good” in the world.
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