"Psycho:" A Psychoanalysis Approach

Psycho is one of the movies that can be analyzed through a psychoanalysis approach. It is a thriller movie about series of murder which is planned and done by Norman, a psychopath hiding in to two different personalities. This approach examines the motive behind Norman’s behavior by murdering his motel’s guests. The three interesting things in this movie are the traumatic past experience, the changing of personality, and the psychopathic tendency which are laid on the main character.

The traumatic past experience places an important factor in creating Norman’s present condition. His unusual attraction towards his mother makes him keep an appearance and an image of his mother while he is murdering people. Also, in this movie he kept the existence of his died mother by creating his mother’s sound from the radio. It makes us think as if his mother was still alive.   According to his past experience, he felt disappointed to his mother because of her affair with other man. Norman felt rejected and lose a competition with that man since he lived only with his mother, which made him an overprotective character towards his mother. Sigmund Freud’s complexes in the phallic stage explained that there is an Oedipus Complex stage, a stage where a boy has an unconscious sexual desires towards his mother so that his father (in Norman’s case, it is the man who had an affair with his mother) is the competitor. Norman, in our opinion, failed to get a resolution in this stage so that he took his mother’s life. It makes him feels more comfortable to construct his ideal ‘mother’ within himself.

The term “mask of sanity” (Hervey Cleckley, 1941) is the appropriate one to describe Norman’s changing personality. This mask of sanity makes it difficult to diagnose and recognize the psychopath. Cleckley further explained that we deal with something suggesting a cleverly constructed reflex machine which can imitate the human personality perfectly. As we know, Norman has two different personalities, one is his ‘normal’ side (Norman) and another is his vicious side (his ‘mother’). This reflects that his vicious side is hiding in his normal side. It is his attempt to cope with the social rules, which against the act of murder. Norman is conscious when he is in his normal personality, while in his vicious personality he is in his unconscious mind.

The psychopathic tendency appears in Norman’s self as a result of his failure in balancing the internal and external demands. What we mean by internal demand is his desire of expressing his anger and the external demand is his normal personality, a proper personality in the society (a young good man). According to Freud, human has three types of personalities: Id, Superego, and Ego. In Norman’s case, he only has Id and Superego. He could not negotiate the chaotic personality (Id) and the perfect personality (Superego) within himself. In other words, he has two completely opposite personalities; his act of murdering is a representation of his Id, which he completed only for his own pleasure. Normally, a person is able to find a way to negotiate with the Id and Superego, this way is called Ego. We consider Norman as a psychopath since he could not discover the best way to deal with his inappropriate desire and the acceptable behavior. The over-dominance of either Id or Superego leads to Neuroses, which arise in unconscious mind. For example, Norman felt guilty when he realized he had murdered Marion and he was also anxious when he was interrogated by the police and Marion’s boyfriend. It is because he was unconscious when he murdered Marion.

Human behavior can be more understandable through the study of psychoanalysis. Psychopath is one invention in it. In Psycho time, there was a strong tendency of psychoanalysis in American society. The movie portrayed this phenomenon and the three main aspects in this movie: the traumatic past experience, the changing of personality, and the psychopathic tendency, are related to one another. Norman’s past experience led him to become a double-personality man, and this personality is a symptom of a psychopath. With the psychoanalysis approach, we can get a clear picture of Norman’s condition and the motives behind it. Although we cannot know the exact reasons of his psychopathic personality, this description can at least guide us to understand about psychopathic behavior represented in Psycho.