He is peeping through a small hole, from which a light comes out and shows his expression. Is it an expression of pleasure? No, it looks like pain he feels. But his eyes are looking so lusty in desire, he is masturbating. I have never seen an expression like this, he is both taking sexual pleasure and feeling a deep pain, plus he seems to be afraid of a mother who might catch him masturbating; he is in such a hurry. But that’s ridiculous, he is a grown up, why would a man be afraid of his mother? Why would a man have to hide himself while satisfying himself?
Such traces of ear and shame can only be seen on the face of a child caught by his mother in the middle of self pleasure. There are traces in that facial expression of Norman Bates of nightmares that Freud describes in his psychoanalysis theories. These are the nightmares which we somehow learn, accept and respect; but which we never dare to emphatize ourselves with. Sigmund Freud talks about the preferably hidden, forbidden and carved mysteries of the human psychology, one of which is deeply reflected in Norman Bates’ twisted face.
There is pleasure; first from the act of self-satisfaction and then from secretly xperiencing something forbidden. There is fear; both from being noticed by the object of pleasure (Marion Crane) and from being caught by the authoritarian mother. And there is shame on that face, contrasting with the hungry eyes. The motive behind the combination of these contrasting feelings should in fact be searched for in the labyrinths of Freudian psycho-analysis. Freud likes to explain every attribute of human behavior from the early memories and experiences of childhood, focusing single- mindedly on sexuality and aggression.
So, what can be the motive behind such a confused expression in the presence of sexual pleasure of asturbation? At this point, Freud would ask for the case history of our patient. Although vague, we have information on very critical incidents in Norman Bates’ life. He is the son of a motel manageress, living far from the town without a father. Here, Freud would come up with the idea of “lack of authoritarian father figure”, which, according to his theories, is a reason for the underdevelopment of superego in the subject’s personality.
In order to support this thought of Freud’s, the lack of the system of values in Norman Bates may be given as a reference; peeping through to a motel lient’s bathroom is not a widely accepted value (of course murdering a mother and many women is out of question). Moreover, added to this traumatic basis in the child’s psychology is the incident of his mother’s and her lover’s death; on the same bed; pierced by the bullets from a pistol held by Norman Bates.
This terrible incident may give us clues why sexual pleasure is an experience that has to be kept hidden, as the child mind links the two incidents: sex and death, and therefore develops a conditional reflex even towards his own bodily pleasures. However, here, Freud would not be satisfied with these plane xplanations; he would come forth with a serious but proud face and start a long conference by explaining that this destructive trauma, given the prior consequences added, should have caused much deeper wounds in the subject’s mind.
Then he would go on this conference with the details of his famous psychoanalysis; the psycho-sexual development phases of human personality. According to him, there are five phases in the first eleven years of life, in each of which there are certain factors in operation that are essential in psychological development. One of these, the phallic phase (between 2 to years) is the phase of utmost importance. In this phase the famous Oedipus Complex takes place during child’s first experience of sexual identification, sexual pleasure and masturbation. Sigmund Freud drew this term from the myth of Oedipus.
Freud describes the source of this complex in his Introductory Lectures (Twenty-First Lecture): “You all know the Greek legend of King Oedipus, who was destined by fate to kill his father and take his mother to wife, who did everything possible to escape the oracle’s decree and punished himself by blinding when he learned that he had none the less unwittingly committed both these crimes” (16. 30). These words not only make a reference to the original complex and Oedipus’ tragedy; but also reveals the ideal of Freud that the childhood period has determining effect on the subject’s future personality.
As in other phases, in this phase the child is in need to identify himself with someone close to it but in sexual terms. Oedipus Complex stands for the child’s feeling (sexual) attraction to the parent of opposite sex and rivalry and hostility to the parent of its own sex Freud claimed this complex to occur by identification with the parent of the same sex and by the renunciation f sexual interest in the parent of the opposite sex and to be related to the transference of the breast from the feeding object to the pleasure and sexual object.
Freud, according to whom the head stones of personality is the repression of sexuality and aggression, also claimed that if this complex could not be solved or directed by the parents, it results in serious abnormalities, obsessions in the subject’s personality (asexuality, sexual abnormality, fetish, unnatural homosexuality/lesbianity, serious resentment, psychology split-up, multi – personality etc). Such primal esires are, of course, quickly repressed but, even among the mentally sane, they will arise again in dreams or in literature.
Nevertheless, in our case, the malfunction in the phallic phase of Norman Bates shows itself not in dreams or literature, but in reality. Therefore, according to Freudian theory, Norman Bates had noone around himself to identify himself with except his mother in his childhood period. Up until the phallic phase, this identification must have been kept normal; but when he came to these critical years, mother had already become the center of every need for him – – even sexual pleasure. This over – identification led him to exaggerate his mother into an angel – like embracing figure.
If the isolation of Norman Bates from the community is taken into account, it may well be seen that this exaggeration became an obsession for him; filling the empty spaces of friends in a child’s heart. Then came the evil turning point of his life – the point here are not the deaths itself or the fact that he was already a murderer; but the biting fact that he most probably saw his mother and her lover having sex, maybe watched them for a while. This is his motive for the murders; however, hile for a simple observer the reason is “jealousy”, for Freud it would be “disappointment”.
He was a boy then, with nothing on his mind but his idealized mother figurine that suppresses every other notions that should be active in a normal boy’s mind – girls, love, sex, parties or football. But just then, this beautiful figurine (because from the only incident we see Mrs. Bates in flesh in Psycho IV (1990), we obviously gather that she was in fact very beautiful) is broken by its own maker; she was not an angel at all, but a “whore”, a “slut” of sex-lust. He killed them both; the igurine was already dead then and it was her mother that killed the imagined figurine; she was guilt of her son’s disappointment.
Then his false identification made the way for the pistol into his hand. BANG! BANG! He was all alone now, in a world he doesn’t even know of. Just like Oedipus, he chose to shut his eyes in order not to see the bitter reality and grew up alone in that lonely motel and the lonely mansion. Nevertheless, he didn’t blind himself completely as Oedipus did, instead, he blinded his mind to the outer world except the few clients in his motel. These facts help explain the wickedness of his masturbation; so lifeless, o fast, so secret and so masochistic.
But he has shame, he has doubt as if he didn’t know how to satisfy himself from birth and he clearly has fear on his face; these feelings are so obvious that it seems as though they acquire concrete existence. Why would a grown up like him be afraid of a mother? From a mother, whom he watched dying? The beautiful, but too thin, girl is in the shower; she is not aware that her body serves Norman Bates as the object of sexual pleasure. She seems to be in need of purification; there are signs of anxiety in her eyes, showing themselves in hesitations.
However, she feels secure as she is safe in that hotel. After all, the smile on Norman’s face has been really reassuring. The smooth and beautiful bath is interrupted with the apparition of a dark figure behind the semi-opaque bath curtains. The girl doesn’t seem to be aware of it at all. Suddenly, the scared face and screaming mouth of the beautiful, but too thin, girl covers the camera. One cut. Two cuts. Three, four, five. The girl falls into the bath, lifeless but still beautiful. Blood unites with water; but as always blood wins. The bathroom doesn’t look very safe now.
The girl’s body is twisted in a very strange position. Would Norman masturbate again if he saw the bending eautiful body? By the way, where is he? This murder is the beginning of our journey to the Psycho cycle. However, even Freud would not come up with a potential suspect. But he may be of help, when Norman comes into the girl’s bathroom and cleans up the mess, as calmly as a maid. He utters something about his mother while doing the “messy” work, that makes us aware that the murderess is his mother. Mother? Didn’t he kill her years ago?
Then, he carefully puts the body into her car and drives the car into the lake. How could he be so calm? Then comes elder woman voices from the mansion, we see Norman carrying corpse, talking to it with his frozen smile, sometimes taking orders, sometimes giving. Here, attributable innocence and guilt shift places. A bit obsessive, resented, sexually abnormal but smiling Norman Bates becomes the symbol of evil in the movie. No psycho mothers, no psycho serial killers, no rapists but our Norman Bates is the one behind these murder, and many other before.
However, he is not even aware of these; he thinks that they are all his mother’s job. Mother? He still thinks that his mother is still alive. That’s why he keeps the corpse in the cobwebby fruit cellar; that’s why he still talks to her. But why? Even if Norman is seriously abnormal, why does he want to keep his mother alive in his mind although she let him down? Mr. Freud loves to reply “why”s. However, he begins to talk about Oedipus Rex, written by Sophocles. In that play, Oedipus is propheted that he will kill his own father, marry his own mother and his children will bring shame upon him.
However, denying the prophets of Apollo the foreseer, he runs away in search for different fates. Freud accounted for this uncanny hold which the play exercises upon us by suggesting that in it we see ourselves, for the oracle given to Oedipus is also, he said, given to very man. However, according to Freud who claimed that men’s deeds are largely inherent in his nature, men’s oracle is not the prophets of Apollo, but the psychiatrists, psychologists and doctors, who foretell necessary and inevitable future actions with detailed inspections in their fields.
In a sense, if Norman Bates had met Freud and spoken his mind to him, Freud, like Apollo, could have foretold him that he would eventually become a murderer. At this point, Mrs. Bates’ death should be revisited. After Norman killed them both, he fell into a painful loneliness, he no longer has his other, he has never had friends, never had a real personality, never had values. Furthermore, he was deeply in need of his mother to help, embrace and protect him. These conflicts made him let the “mother self” move into his mind.
However, his hatred didn’t allow her to stay as she had been, it deprived her of his womanhood and sexual attributes; for Norman she can no longer have any woman-like properties. Therefore, she became an old, ugly woman with a harsh, commanding voice in his head. Therefore, he lets her (or his shadowy feminine side or superego) move into his mind. (this figure nterferes in Norman’s life, just like he is used to be treated by his mother. Every time Norman is sexually aroused in desire for a living woman, his subconscious mother emerges and tries to stop this.
Another reason for this interference is the underlying guiltiness of cheating on his mother that he feels while masturbating. The imagined, unconscious mother is symbolized with the cobwebby fruit cellar. He lets his idealized mother live within him, because of his fear of loneliness and motherlessness, however this psychonecrophiliac union is the cruel reason beneath his ragedy; as the mother takes over him completely. Even in his memory, there are blank periods in which his mother takes the control and he does not remember.
Furthermore, the “mother” in Norman’s head is the symbol of authority for him , calling out his name in an old, harsh voice every time another feminine figure appears in his life. Mother figure is a powerful, ambiguous and self – contradictory image. Father figure changes from individual to individual; but mother figure has some basic and distinct same images in everyone’s head. Mothers invoke memories of comfort; but also of punishment and fear. This image does not have tragic differences from culture to culture.
Because of this prototypical figure, which every individual has in some way a connection to, and because of the identical experiences this results in, there is a collective unconscious that is sometimes hidden, sometimes helpful and sometimes over active in the collective conscious. In our case, as Freud would also agree, Norman Bates’ mother figure becomes the dominant decision organ of his mind; even though he knows that she died, according to him, she “came back.
The role of motherhood is a blank space in his mind, and e deeply needs to fill that space without being let down by “whores” – i. e. real women. His tragedy (and the movie) ends with the combination of the unconscious (mother) and the conscious (Norman) which results in Norman’s dread, making him aware of everything. However, he finds another way, as he always does, to escape from this dread by letting his body and his mother’s dead mind get united and take the control.
In the end, Norman sits immobile in a chair, imagining himself the desiccated corpse in the fruit cellar who couldn’t hurt a fly. We see the empty sockets of her skull peeking out from behind his eyes. PSYCHO CYCLE In Psycho II (1983), Norman has been cured. Mother has been exorcised, but that just means that her role is available again if anyone else should want it In Psycho III (1986), the audience see Norman in full form again, still believing that his mother is alive, but “just goes a little crazy sometimes.
From his careless words “But you came back” to his mother, we understand that it does not make any difference for Norman who takes the mother role; as in his own mind, she should be the idealized Mrs. Bates. She always comes back to him, sometimes as Miss Spool, sometimes s the unconscious mother. In the third (literally fourth) movie, the subconscious mother carries on living in him; but it is him who desires to kill but again to protect his mother. He becomes willing to kill.
However, something unexpected happens, and Norman falls in love with a living woman, the ex-nun and after admitting this to himself he slashes his mother to ribbons. The reason beneath this decision of his is that he and his mother are equal then; he has killed her lover and (in his mind) his mother has killed the woman he is in love with. This notion exorcises the mother figure from is mind. Therefore, the post of motherhood becomes empty, with no one else left to take it.
This release from the dominant mother figure in fact symbolizes his postponed personality transition from the phallic phase to genital phase. ) In the movie, Psycho IV, Norman appears as a husband. However, although the commanding mother voice has been cut off, he decides to kill his wife when he learns that she is pregnant. But his real aim behind this decision is to prevent his wife from becoming a “mother”, which cognition becomes nothing but an obsession. According to this obsessed point of iew, any mother “in flesh” has possibility to let him down.
This cruel decision calls the mother figure to help (“Get rid of that slut! “) and the transference of the Mother into Norman’s mind takes place. Though it is never stated as such, it is clear that Norman murders Norma because, by virtue of her inconsistent, positively sexual behavior, she has forfeited the role of “Mother,” now rigidly defined by the superego “Mother” who has been firmly installed in Norman’s head. Norma makes the fatal error of renouncing the role of Mother and becoming one of the “whores” — i. e. , real live women.