The denial of the recognition of worth as a method of energy appropriation is not to be confused with the denial of human dignity, although frequently it accompanies it. The latter has extreme objectives and is aimed toward the complete devaluation of a human being and his fundamental qualities, distorting and presenting these qualities as dangerous, or at the very least shameful, defects. The denial of the recognition of worth, on the other hand, has objectives which are more limited and focused, aimed at limiting an individual's scope of activity so that it does not "extend too far". It's a vampiric scheme that can crop up both in a situation where competition is part of the game (for example, a work place or certain study environments), as well as in a community whose members should instead work together to pursue a common goal.

The scheme of the denial of worth often crops up in the family, and is more extensive than one might think in relations of friendship. The method of application - like all vampiric actions - is usually very clear and at times shamelessly obvious, although rarely is the victim immediately conscious of it because it is very painful to him.

If a person shows a particular vocation for something, or achieves success in a certain area, or merely performs his duties - or lives his life - with joy, you can be sure that soon enough the shadow of a Vampire will appear on his horizon.

If the Vampire is a potential competitor, he will perform his actions mainly behind his victim's back, discrediting the results obtained by that person and suggesting that they are of little value, or that they're due to luck, or to certain contacts, or to talent that is limited exclusively to a defined area and that in no way could be expressed if there weren't others to make up for certain fundamental shortcomings of his, sacrificing themselves for him out of pure generosity.

If instead the Vampire is a friend, or a family member, or someone who shares a fundamental, positive objective with that person, he will be more inclined toward an act of destruction aimed at undermining the psychological serenity of the person, suggesting to him, in effect, themes that are identical to those which he uses behind his rival's back: "You will come to realize on your own that your merits are not of much value, or, if you insist that they have value, you will not be able to deny the enormous debt you owe to luck and to those who make up for your shortcomings".

In the novella Expositio ad bestias, Mario is the third of four children: the first, Antonio, died in the war; the second, Armando, is a maladjusted misfit, crushed by the weight of his mother's attentions; Giunta, the last born, is a super-coddled child-woman, spoiled and capricious. Mario has always been the real support of the family, even now that he is married to Lucia; but he has never been given the least amount of credit for it. Mario, in fact, according to the family philosophy (maintained above all by his mother Jole), has no merits, but rather is "lucky", and so he is continually sacrificed on the altar of the other "unlucky" siblings, especially Armando, the second child, who is married to Gina, another champion of bad luck.

Since the beginning of their marriage, Gina and Armando had been able, with scientific precision, to pay off every penny of the salary well before the payment of the following one. Thus, around the twentieth of the month – and afterwards, as years went by and the children were born, around the eighteenth, the fifteenth and, ultimately, even the twelfth or tenth – you could see them appear on the threshold of Mario’s house, with that stray dog-like expression of theirs. The ritual was now perfectly tested: they kept silent, awaiting that Mario or his wife Lucia asked what was the most conventional and at the same time incautious of the questions: "How’s it going?". This was a question that Armando and Gina, with their own experience, had ceased to ask anyone and that – for that sensation of hypnotic emptiness that one feels in front of those who are so insolent as to give up, from the very beginning, any expression of courtesy – they were able to extort anyone, even to their worst enemy. The answer to this fatal question consisted as a rule in a quick exchange of glances between husband and wife. Then Gina’s sudden vent of cry followed, while Armando, busy in putting on a grimace of pain, found it hard to restrain the half-smile that was twisting his facial muscles for the joy of the already half-successful task. The sequel to the visit was a mere formality. From somewhere a wallet stuck out. From it some bills were taken out which Armando and Gina rejected with desperate gestures, till Mario or Lucia succeeded in pressing them forcedly into the palm of a wriggling hand, then closing around the fingers, stretched out in an extreme defense of the wounded dignity. At that point, a sudden appointment arranged with some creditor (appointment that made unconceivable the strenuous physical resistance opposed to the delivery of the money some instant before) tore the two fellows from their relatives’ loving attention, projecting them again on their enigmatic shipwreck-like dimension.
Since the rule that Mrs. Jole had dictated established that Armando was not incautious and maladjusted, but "extremely unlucky", neither Mario nor Lucia ever dared to seriously inquire into Armando and Gina’s economic life.
[...] Armando, to tell the truth, before the suspension from work, earned a little less than Mario, who, among other things, was an employee in a very small company, which alternated happy moments with sudden setbacks, with following serious risks of survival. Armando, on the other hand, worked in a big company generously subsidized by the government, and a cautious management would have helped him to get over the hill towards a secure pension, floating on summer bonuses, overtime pays, soft loans and substantial chances (if not formally allowed, in fact tolerated) of rounding out his income by doing some other job, considering the nearly symbolic working hours.
The trouble was that Armando, after Antonio’s death, had actually replaced this latter in the family’s heart. And that sensation of frailty, of insubstantiality, of incorporeity, of Nothing that by now the family associated with the idea of a natural firstborn, had shifted to him who now was the actual firstborn. And the ghost of the same unfathomable unknown that had swallowed Antonio had found shelter in Armando, who, one day, waking up in his new condition, had found himself frail, insubstantial, incorporeal, nullified like the lost brother.
Different had been Mario’s life. Since Antonio’s departure for the war, he had well realized that he was not designated at all to compensate for that love gap, but that he had instead an unexpected occasion to justify an existence whose superfluity found efficacious synthesis in the definition of "one more mouth to feed" with which it was alluded to him in most of the family speeches. The natural way to take this opportunity was to provide for his family’s concrete needs [...] And then it had been Mario, during the war and the years immediately after, to make ends meet. Devoting every drop of his energy to work, not only had he succeeded in providing for his family’s main needs, but he had also financed a series of eccentric activities of its members. First of all the herbal oddness of his father, who, under the illusion of going back to play in the theater as a young actor and to become rich, devoted time and money to prepare a medicament which would make the wrinkles of his face disappear, and for which, apart from that artistic purpose, he foretold millionaire destines. Secondly, the exanimed passions of his brother, who, always within the walls of his room, had been a poet, a painter, a sculptor and finally an astrophysicist. Then he had tried out a career as a soccer player, quite soon cut off for the unexpected exclusion from the team list of the Robur-Tibur, a fourth-division team that was said to be spied by certain observers of big national clubs. Thirdly, the whims of Giunta, who, "with a natural flair for music", had practically tried out all musical instruments, let alone the wind ones (and obviously the lessons of the respective teachers), before concluding that her true vocation was singing and allowing herself the lessons of one of the greatest contraltos in the country, with a compensation payment that had surprised even the contralto herself. And lastly, the longing for pension of his mother Jole, who envied her husband’s creative idleness and chimerical activities, his long afternoons with crosswords and his evening walks to admire the sunset and the evening star on waste land of the Endless Meadow nearby their house. To obtain all this, Mum had extorted money from Mario for an hourly paid maid help, who, anyway (overcome by Jole’s imperial strictness and by all that Carnival of singing exercises, fumes of herb boiling and enunciation of astrophysical laws alternated with juggling balls in the terrace) had exactly endured it only a few hours, opening the way to an inexhaustible alternation of housewives.

The real Vampire of this story, Jole, will carry to extremes her own need to devalue Mario in favor of the other children, and at the first opportunity she will even resort to the arts of a witch, a group of witches in fact, who will only make her vampiric tendencies "official" by suggesting to her that she take the energy of her little grandson, Mario's son, and divert it toward the two unfortunate children. The child, having fallen into the coils of a fatal spell, will even risk being killed by his own grandmother who, deceived by the witches, ends up believing that her grandson, deprived of all his energy (the "Agnisdè" as the witches suggestively call it using a dialectal corruption of the Latin expression Agnus Dei), is nonetheless condemned to death.

The denial of the recognition of worth as a form of vampiric activity also recurs in the already cited short story The Excavator, in which the protagonist, Michelino Cortese, who had come in third in a drawing contest that involved all of the city's junior high school students, isn't even mentioned by the drawing teacher when the latter congratulates the class for the gratifying results achieved. All of the praise is given to his classmate Santovito, who was number eleven, and to Trotta, who actually came in in ninety-eighth place.

When Michelino tries to gain the class's support for that lack of recognition, he will come up against a wall and will remain completely alone with the pain of the injustice he has suffered. The Vampire, in this case, hasn't even had to bother to perform some action: taking advantage of his own authority, he merely had to hold back the truth in order to effortlessly achieve the devaluation of Michelino's merits. Michelino, on the other hand, to regain the friendship which the class has withdrawn from him, will have to resort to a kind of psychological suicide, not only giving up the just recognition of his own worth, but ending up actually denying its very existence.