47 pages • 1 hour read
Robert BlochPsycho
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1959A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
The Duality of Human Nature
Content Warning: This guide describes and analyzes the source text’s treatment of trauma, abuse, and mental health conditions. The novel contains stigmatizing depictions of cross-dressing and an individual with a mental health condition, which relies on outdated and offensive tropes that connect mental health conditions with violence.
In November of 1957, the arrest of the now-infamous serial killer, Ed Gein, rocked the small town of Plainfield, Wisconsin. Gein was a shock to the American public of the sanitized, domestic culture of 1950s society. A sense arose that evil may be hiding in most inconspicuous places, such as small midwestern towns. Partially inspired by Gein, Bloch’s serial killer, Norman Bates, exemplifies darkness lurking beneath the surface of small-town life. One of the most prevalent themes in Psycho is The Duality of Human Nature: While people may present one face to the world, it is impossible to know what goes on in their minds or private lives. Both Norman and Mary demonstrate the human capacity to act in contradictory ways, exemplifying the struggle between good and evil, mental health and mental illness. It is important to note that, though the novel links violence and mental health conditions, mental health experts have found that the two are not causally related. In fact, people with mental health conditions are far more likely to experience violent crime than to perpetrate it.
Throughout the novel, Bloch emphasizes Norman’s external ordinariness, creating tension between what the reader knows about him and what the other characters know about him. For example, when Sam and Lila go to the Bates Motel, dissatisfied with Sheriff Chambers’s cursory investigation, Norman’s seeming average persona disarms Sam; he does not fit Sam’s idea of someone involved in a person's disappearance: “Looking at this man, listening to him, Sam was beginning to feel slightly ashamed. He sounded so—so damned ordinary! It was hard to imagine him being mixed up in something like this” (147). This façade of normalcy is Norman’s best camouflage—even to Norman himself. The revelation of Norman’s part in Norma’s death illustrates this. As Sam reports to Lila, in retrospect, the suicide note Norman penned for Norma was suspicious and should have been a red flag for investigators, “[b]ut nobody noticed, any more than they noticed what really happened to Norman after he finished the note and phoned the Sheriff to come out” (170).
While Norman demonstrates an extreme duality, Bloch uses Mary to suggest that everyone has a dual nature. Mary impulsively steals $40,000 from her employer because she is frustrated with her life and feels powerless to change it. This act is against everything Sam and Lila know about Mary, who lived her life in service of her mother and sister. Lila and Sam know about Mary’s kindness, and they even know something of her frustration, but they do not understand the pressure her kindness and empathy put her under. She eventually cracked under its weight, leading her frustration to take over. Through Mary, Bloch reminds his audience that even “good” people are susceptible to immoral or illegal behavior given the right circumstances.
Psychoanalyzing Norman Bates
Psychoanalyzing Norman Bates to explore the causes of his behavior is a major focus of the novel. In the 1950s and 1960s, unlike today, psychoanalysis was considered a legitimate tool of mental health, and Psycho's treatment of mental health reflects this. It is important to note that much of the novel’s discussion of mental health is outdated and discounted by modern science. While many of the tenets of Freudian psychology are largely discounted in modern psychology, however, psychoanalysis continues to be used as a tool of literary critique, and in that context, it provides a direct look into the mind of Norman Bates.
One of the main tenets of psychology divides the human mind between the conscious mind, represented by the ego, and the subconscious mind, represented by the id. The superego functions as the conscience, which moderates the interactions of the id and the ego on both a conscious and subconscious level. Freud contends that the root of mental health conditions lies in the influence of the subconscious upon the conscious mind. Bloch uses this tenant of psychoanalysis to explain Norman’s mental health condition: Norman’s mind has fractured into three distinct identities—young Norman, adult Norman, and Norma—due to the trauma of Norma’s abuse and his guilt over murdering her and Joe Considine. This explanation answers critical questions about Bloch’s seemingly unreliable narrative, as well as Norman’s questions about himself.
In the ego-superego-id power dynamic, Norman’s Adult Norman persona acts as the superego, trying to balance his child self and his mother’s persona. Sam explains that adult Norman, “who had to go through the daily routine of living and conceal the existence of the other personalities from the world” (171), was the most ordinary of the three. Young Norman corresponds to the id, which Freud believed governs the basest drives of the human psyche, such as the hunger and sex drives. Bloch reveals that Norma “deliberately prevented [Norman] from growing up,” depriving him of his opportunity to sexually and emotionally mature and develop a healthy relationship with the opposite sex. The author suggests that Norman’s id is stunted, childlike, and timid. Norman adopts his mother’s vitriolic attitude and childish hatred toward women, as well as fear of his own sexuality. This fear dominates his childish id, which follows its basic instinct to seek safety from its mother. Norma, the dominant personality, represents Norman’s ego. Norman cedes his agency to Norma’s personality, who, in life, dictated every aspect of his life. She “protects” Norman from the perceived threat of his attraction to Mary by killing her. When Arbogast’s discovery threatens Norma’s continued existence, she again takes over. Norman experiences these ego takeovers, which typically occur when he has been drinking, as blackouts. In this way, Bloch sets up Norma’s drinking as a red herring. Norman instead enters a fugue state, a momentary loss of memory and awareness of self, in these moments.
Norman’s guilt over murdering his mother is another layer of trauma in addition to the abuse he experienced growing up. This guilt is manifest in the hermetically sealed world of the Bates house, which Norman keeps in the same condition as his mother left it, much like he preserves her corpse. He convinces himself he has, through his occult research, found a way to “resurrect” her, a delusion he accomplishes by exercising his taxidermy skills. He believes he is living a “normal” life with his mother’s mummified corpse. This is an example of cathexis, the transfer of emotional energy, usually to an inanimate object or a keepsake. Norman spends this emotional energy keeping his mother “alive.” In a way, Norma is alive through Norman, as the last chapter suggests, though she is not the Norma whom Norman poisoned with strychnine. Instead, the living Norma is Norman’s own ego in the form of his perception of her. He keeps her alive as another personality in his head, fed with his fear, trauma, and dependence until it eclipses his own ego entirely. This final revelation changes Psycho from a slasher thriller to a work of psychological horror. As Lila frames it, “Then the horror wasn’t in the house…It was in his head” (171).
Shame and Repression
Psycho explores the potential psychological harm that unchecked Shame and Repression can cause, as in the case of Norman Bates. Norman’s profound feelings of shame are deeply rooted in his relationship with his mother, Norma, whose domineering and controlling nature instills in him a sense of inadequacy and unworthiness. Norman’s shame coexists with his repressed sexuality. Unable to cope with these feelings, Norman bottles them up, lashing out in violent ways when he cannot contain them any longer.
Part of Norman’s shame is directly linked to his sexual repression. At age 40, he has hardly had any contact with the opposite sex. For example, when Mary asks if he has ever married, he blushes and says, “I’ve never married. Mother was—funny—about those things. I—I’ve never even sat at a table with a girl like this before” (34). Norman represses his sexuality and other aspects of his identity his mother deemed unacceptable, leading to internalized turmoil and psychological conflict. Norman describes himself as impotent, and his sexual frustration leads him to construct the peephole to Room 6, disguised behind a frame in his office. From this peephole, he engages in acts of voyeurism. Mary penetrates Norman’s protective bubble by asking him questions about his personal life and critiquing his relationship with his mother. Mary gets uncomfortably close to Norman by suggesting that he has a way out from his mother’s domineering influence.
The way that Norman talks about women when he feels sexually frustrated also suggests Norma’s repressive influence. For example, Norman thinks, “Mother was right. They were b*tches. But you couldn’t help yourself, not when a b*tch was as lovely as this one was, and you knew you would never see her again” (46). These thoughts seem in direct conflict with his earlier feelings, suggesting Norma is taking over. Further, Norman briefly fantasizes about winning Mary over, but this fantasy stops just short of becoming sexual: “Impotent. The word the books used, the word mother used, the word that meant you were never going to see her again because it wouldn't do any good” (46). This passage suggests that Norma told her son he was impotent, which he believes is true, illustrating the extent of his sexual repression and adoption of Norma’s beliefs. He even rationalizes the situation by deciding that Norma killed Mary to protect him from seduction, though in reality, Norman killed her to protect himself from confronting his repression. Even Norman’s taking on his mother’s persona reflects his extreme repression, as it results from his inability to acknowledge that he killed her. At the end of the novel, by allowing Norma to take total control of his mind, Norman can reconcile the feelings of shame and repression he has suffered from his whole life.
