Psycho!

In Psycho, Norman Bates is shown to be a truly distrubed person. Norman has scopophilia, as demonstrated how he enjoys watching Marion undress before she gets in the shower. As stated in Laura Mulvey’s “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema”, she states how scopophilia is associated, “with taking other people as objects, subjecting them to a controlling and curious gaze. [Some] particular examples center around the voyeuristic activities of children”. This applies to Norman, in the way that his “Mother” still treats him as a child who isn’t able to be with a woman. The way Norman watches Marion is with a fascination, and admiration, and gets pleasure from simply watching her. In contrast, while the scene of Marion undressing for her shower was for the pleasure of Norman, the next scene of Marion in the shower is for the audience’s pleasure. There are no characters on screen to watch Marion, until “Mother” bursts in to kill her. This shows that the scene of Marion naked in the shower was to appeal to the gaze of the male audience members. This scene abruptly ends when “Mother” comes in response to the anxiety felt by Norman.

    Norman’s “Mother” personality comes out when he starts to feel some castration anxiety. The first time it happened, Marion was nice to Norman and told him to get out of the motel if he could, and that he doesn’t owe anything to his mother. Norman feels subdued after hearing this, and becomes intimidated by Marion being an independent woman. That, coupled with Norman watching her undress was enough to make “Mother” come out and get rid of the problem. As stated in “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema”, one reason someone would experience “symbolise the castration threat by her real absence of a penis” as demonstrated by Marion in this scene. When the private investigator comes around to the motel to ask questions, Norman is intimidated and flustered by what was asked and how aggressively he was being interrogated. This was a verbal pissing contest, and Norman lost. This castration anxiety once again made “Mother” come out and solve the problem.

    The way the castration anxiety is solved is with the knife used to kill all of “Mother”’s victims. It is quite a large knife, that is effectively used to penetrate all of the victims, from Marion, the private investigator, and the almost murder of Sam. These people intimidated Norman, to the point where his “Mother” personality came out and felt the need to stop what was giving Norman those feelings and to protect him. As stated in “When the Woman Looks” by Linda Williams, Norman’s “Mother ” emerges whenever he feels sexual desire for a woman. This also gives the mother personality her own type of castration anxiety almost, in relation to how she feels inadequate compared to the women stealing her child’s attention away from her, so she responds by killing them.