Coles, John Mark F.

4CA4

October 13, 2012

A Psychoanalysis film theory review of Alfred Hitchcocks Psycho Considered to be as one of the best films to be ever made, Director Alfred Hitchcocks film Psycho continues to have tremendous impact in the film industry decades after its release in 1960. Hitchcock released this film just two years releasing Vertigo, considered to be as the best film of all time by the Sight & Sounds critics poll. Based on a novel written by Robert Bloch, Psycho as the name implies, was one of the first ever psychological thriller films. With its shocking bursts of violence and provocative sexual explicitness, Psycho tested the strict censorship boundaries of the day as well as audiences' mettle, all in black and white. The film starts with Marion Crane played by actress Janet Leigh and Sam Loomis played by John Gavin together on a bed talking about their situation. Due to his divorce, Sam has to give most of his money away in alimony and because of this Marion and Sam doesnt have enough money to be married to each other. Marion, who works in a bank, manages to embezzle $40,000 from one of her employers clients in order to help Sam in his financial problems. Marion then decides to go straight to Sams home in California. A small problem arose when his employer saw her driving as he crossed a street as Marion did not go to work that day because she called in sick even though she really wasnt. Along the way to California she decides to park along the road to sleep as it was night already and she was tired of driving. In the morning a highway patrol officer notices the parked car and wakes Marion up. The officer starts asking questions and his suspicions became roused because of Marions agitated state due to the stolen money and because of this the officer then follows Marion after the interrogation. Marion, upon discovering that shes being followed decides to trade her car for another one. After trading her car and being

on the road again a heavy rainstorm happened that makes the road impassable. The rainstorm prompts Marion to spend the night at the Bates Motel where she sees Norman Bates, the owner of the motel. Norman tells Marion how they rarely have customers due to the motels location as the road trough it is a less-travelled highway. Norman also mentions that his house is just beside the motel overlooking it and that he lives with his mother. During their conversation, Norman manages to invite Marion to have dinner together which she accepts. Marion then accidentally hears Norman and his mother talking about her. They seem to be having an argument over Norman supposedly having sexual interest in Marion. During their dinner together Marion tells Norman that he should have his mother institutionalized. Norman admits that he would like to but he doesnt want to abandon his mother. After having dinner and returning to her room, Marion chooses to return to Phoenix to the return the stolen money. As she undresses in her room to have a shower, Norman watches through a peephole in his office wall, unknowingly to Marion. After calculating how she can repay the money she has spent, Marion flushes her notes down the toilet and begins to shower. Suddenly, a shadowy figure enters the bathroom and stabs Marion to death. Norman after hearing the screams of Marion rushes to her room and finds the corpse, and immediately assumes that his mother committed the murder. He cleans the bathroom and places Marion's body, wrapped in the shower curtain, and all her possessions including the money in the trunk of her car and sinks it in a nearby swamp. Lila, Marions sister, becomes curious on why her sister hasnt come home for days decide to talk to Sam. Lila becomes suspicious on her sisters whereabouts and hires a private eye named Milton Arbogast to find her and also to recover the money. Using his detective skills Arbogast traces Marion to the Bates Motel and questions Norman, who lies by making up a story

that Marion had indeed stayed at the motel for one night and had left first thing in the morning. Arbogast, while asking Norman looks at the Bates residence and sees a woman by the window. Arbogast then questions Norman about who she is and Norman answered by saying that it was his mother. Arbogast then requests if he can talk to his mother. Norman refuses saying that his mother is ill. After the interrogation Arbogast calls Lila and tells her he will contact her again after hopefully questioning Norman's mother as shes the only person there aside from Norman. After the call Arbogast enters the Bates house unknowingly to Norman and is attacked by a figure that slashes his face with a large kitchen knife similar to the one that was used against Marion, causing him to fall down the stairs, and then stabs him to death. Norman confronts his mother and urges her to hide in the cellar so no one could find her. She rejects the idea and orders him out of her room. Against her will, Norman carries her down to the fruit cellar. Lila and Sam who hasnt heard anything from Arbogast decides to reach the local officials. Deputy Sheriff Al Chambers is puzzled to learn that Arbogast saw a woman in a window, and reveals that Norman's mother had died ten years earlier. Norman had found her dead alongside her married lover; an apparent murdersuicide. When Chambers dismisses Lila and Sam's concerns over Arbogast's disappearance, the two decide to search the motel themselves. Posing as a married couple, Sam and Lila check into the motel and search Marion's cabin, where they find a scrap of paper with "$40,000" written on it. While Sam distracts Norman, Lila sneaks into the house to search for his mother. Sam suggests Norman killed Marion for the money so he could buy a new hotel. Realizing Lila is missing, Norman knocks Sam unconscious and rushes to the house. Lila sees him and hides in the cellar where she discovers the mummified body of Mrs. Bates sitting on a rocking chair and screams. Seconds

later, Norman rushes in, wearing his mother's clothes and a wig, and the same knife that took the lives of Marion and Arbogast. Sam arrives just in time to subdue Bates and save Lila. After Norman's arrest, forensic psychiatrist Dr. Fred Richmond tells Sam and Lila that Mrs. Bates is still alive in Norman's mind. After the death of Norman's father, the pair lived as if they were the only people in the world as they isolated themselves therefore developing a strong bond to each other. When his mother found a lover, however, Norman was consumed with intense jealousy and murdered both of them. Wracked with guilt, he tried to "erase the crime" by bringing his mother "back to life" in his mind. He stole her corpse and preserved the body, and developed a split personality in which the two personas Norman and "Mother" coexist; when he is Mother, he acts, talks and dresses as she would. Marion is revealed to have been Mother's third victim, the first two also having been attractive young women; Mother is as jealous of Norman as he is of her, and so "she" kills anyone he feels attracted to. His psychosis protects him from knowing about other crimes committed after his mother's death. Norman sits in a cell, his mind dominated by the Mother persona. She talks to herself saying that she will prove to the authorities that she is harmless by refusing to swat a fly on Norman's hand. Norman/Mother then forms a smile as he faces the camera. The film closely parallels psychoanalytic goals. Where psychoanalysis concerns itself with exploring repressed or unconscious impulses, anxieties, and internal conflicts of a person, Psycho similarly focuses on the darker, unknown aspects of humanity. The film implements psychoanalytical theory both thematically and visually. First, the film, like psychoanalysis, attempts to piece together fragmentary parts into a coherent whole; in order to achieve this whole identity, the film-like psychoanalysis-both look to the unconscious as an answer to the problems

encountered consciously. Second, the film's mis-en-scne, like Freudian slips of the tongue, provides clues to unconscious drives. Third, in psychoanalytic style, the film analyzes both the psychotic behaviour of its main character, and the neurosis of the viewing audience. Finally, the film parallels psychoanalytic theory in its difficulty with presenting the female character as anything but tangential to the male character. One scene in particular that can be analyzed psychoanalytically is the famous murder scene of Marion in the showers. The murder sequence has been analyzed endlessly, and incorrectly, both for what it supposedly shows and what it supposedly doesnt. But its far more disturbing for what it means. Because Marion has, at this point, decided to return the money, and face the consequences. She doesnt deserve to die, does she? Hasnt she repented, decided to make amends? And Norman, who unknowingly tosses the money away later when hes cleaning up Mothers mad work doesnt he deserve to keep that cash, to make the escape Marion couldnt? In another movie, yes, but in the bleak world of Psycho, deserve has nothing to do with it. Our lives have no grand design, no divine purpose. Theyre just pointless little spans, driven by primitive needs, ending at arbitrary moments. Many critics have noted also the name of Janet Leighs character Marion. She comes from Phoenix and her last name is Crane. In the scene where the audience sees the office and the room of Norman Bates, we see stuffed animals therefore implying that Norman practices Taxidermy. One thing that I saw was that almost all of the animals were birds. Marions room in the motel also has pictures of birds. Hitchcock would later explore over his next movie, The Birds, that birds are odd, unknowable creatures, moving en masse and by instinct. And they are just as likely to fly into their own death as away from it, singing merrily all the time.

And why does Hitchcocks camera so often capture his characters in two-shots, facing each other in matching profiles? The names of Marion and Norman even look a little alike just as Sam resembles a slightly buffed-up Norman. And actual mirrors are everywhere, constantly surprising the characters (or us the audience) with unexpected reflections. Is it just the movies way of teasing out its theme of multiple personalities? Or is it suggesting that all of us shelter secret selves? In an attempt to create a coherent story the film offers specific details in its opening scene. First the place is given: Phoenix, Arizona. Then the date is given: Friday, December the Eleventh. Finally the time is given: 2:43 P.M. This detailed opening prepares the audience for a detective story, and it is the goal of a detective story (and a psychoanalyst) to solve a mystery by piecing together the clues. The appearance of these initial clues prepares the audience for a crime story and also puts them in the mindset of gathering more clues. However, no amount of fact gathering could have prepared the audience for the enigma to come (Norman's mother is alive and knows something about Marion's stay at the Bates motel) and probably never solves the crime even as he dies at the hands of Norman in his mother's guise. Sam and Lila, believing in a flawed assumption (Norman has stolen the 40,000 dollars from Marion) also do not solve the crime until they are faced with a knife-wielding Norman as his mother's clothes fall off him, revealing the true crime to the unsuspecting characters (as well as the unsuspecting audience). The survivors of the crime-Sam, Lila, and the audience are left with a psychiatrist's explanation of what happened. While this explanation seems to incorporate all the clues into a coherent story (Norman killed his mother out of jealousy of her lover; Norman became his mother to make present her absence; Norman re-enacted the jealousy he believed his mother would employ over his love interests in the same manner he acted out his jealousy onto his mother), it fails to satisfy

the nice, neat wrap-up at the end of most detective films. One of our last images is of Norman's face superimposed with his mother's skull-leaving the audience to wonder if there is still more to the story-after all, sometimes the solidified fragments of a whole easily dissipate into pieces. The opening scene presents a survey of the city of Phoenix. As we scan the buildings, the camera focuses on one building and takes us closer until we enter through an opened window to find Marion and Sam in a motel room. We have begun our journey, and will continue this pattern of delving deeper than surface appearances to find aspects of life normally unseen. A major theme of many Hitchcock films is that beneath normal Bourgeois life exists terror, and beneath normality exists abnormality. Marion will discover this as she takes her first step out of her normal world into the abnormal, which is the theft of money from her employer's client. This theft pulls her from the morality of the forces of her super-ego towards the desires of her id. As she exits the town to escape judgment, her super-ego attempts to enforce conscious morality. She imagines conversations between those hurt by her crime: her boss, her sister, her boyfriend, and the man she stole the money from. She is still not dissuaded and continues. The next scene is of an officer pulling up to Marion's parked car (she slept by the side of the road). As an officer of the law, this man represents Marion's last chance to listen to the forces of the super-ego and suppress her desires. This attempt fails and she continues on her path, watching the officer/super-ego disappear through her rear view mirror. She has succumbed to the selfish desires of her id. Her journey ends at the Bates Motel. "This motel, which contains deep, dark, ugly secrets about a twisted and demented soul, rises up into consciousness like the Freudian id" (Spoto 366). At the check in desk, she verbally tells Norman what the film has been trying to symbolize, "I thought I'd gotten off the main road." Ironically it is her conversation with Norman (perhaps she senses in Norman the pitfalls of trusting one's id), that convinces Marion to get back

on the main road, but it is too late. Having fallen prey to her own unconscious desires, she will now fall prey to Norman's unconscious desires, but unlike hers, his are psychotic and final. Even though Marion is dead, the audience is left to further investigate the deep recesses of the mind. We follow Lila, Marion's sister, deeper into Norman's unconscious via her exploration of his house. Her search leads us deep into the fruit cellar where Norman's secret is revealed, as is the extreme desirousness of the unconscious id. Marion's (and the audiences) journey culminates in an exploration of the unconscious, but the desires and fears of the unconscious are relayed to us through more than the story line-the background imagery also helps us in our investigation of the id. Freud describe the unconscious as making itself manifest through gaps which are unintended lapses in memory, slips of the tongue, puns, and dreams. The mis-en-scne of Psycho lends itself to the puns and slips of the tongue whereby the unconscious manifests itself into the conscious. Word play and visual imagery give subtle clues to the workings of the unconscious.