Literary Theory – CIA 1

A Description of Psychoanalytic Theory and its Influence on Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho

By Priyam Gupta

It has not been concealed from the world that the acclaimed director of films such as Spellbound

(1945), Vertigo (1958), Psycho (1960), and Marnie (1964), Alfred Hitchcock, borrows

consciously and frequently from the psychoanalytic theories of Sigmund Freud. Several dozens

of papers have been written around this exact correlation, with Psycho especially dominating the

conversation. This can be attributed to the fact that it contained what were at the time considered

as “shocking” depictions of nudity and violence, which served to revolutionize the genres of

horror and thriller. Constantine Sandis, in her essay in the European Journal of Psychology

(2009), called it “the most Freudian of all Hitchcock’s films”, and most academics are in

agreement that this is the first “psychoanalytic thriller”. Therefore, as it is already well-

established that few films exist in which the Freudian themes are more overt than in Psycho, our

aim is to first understand Freud’s theory of personality and subsequently analyze the film in

question through this particular approach to the human psyche with our own unique perspective.

In a general sense, Freud’s psychoanalytic theory of personality explains that a

significant portion of our minds – our feelings, emotions, thoughts, fear, impulses, and desires –

is hidden from our consciousness and is only accessible to the so-called “unconscious mind”.

According to Freud, this part of the mind cannot be peered into at will with ease, and requires

more than a perfunctory introspection to reveal its contents. However, he clarifies that not every

feeling, emotion, thought, etc. that is not immediately in the reach of the conscious is subdued
within the unconscious. Some of it is present in the preconscious, and can be available when we

turn our attention to it.

Freud’s theory of the unconscious consists of three parts – the Id, Superego, and the Ego.

The Id, considered to be the earlier part of the personality to emerge, is responsible for our

instincts, desires, and needs. It controls our most primitive drives and reflexes and is motivated

entirely by the pleasure principle, which seeks instant gratification. Of course, since it is

impossible to fulfil all of our desires right away, it is necessary to keep the Id in check, which is

where the Ego comes into the picture. This part is concerned with reality, unlike the Id, which is

mostly concerned with the Imaginary World. The Ego does not so much curb the desires of the

Id as it finds a socially acceptable way of satisfying them. This, Freud says, is the reality

principle, which controls the instinctual urges of the pleasure principle. The final part of our

personality is the Superego, which emerges between the ages of 3 and 5, when humans are in the

phallic stage of psychosexual development. It is this part that serves as the voice of moral

reasoning and gives us our sense of right and wrong.

The Superego consists of two significant components: the conscious and the ego ideal.

When we do something wrong, it is the job of the conscious to punish us with feelings of guilt,

whereas the ego ideal rewards us with feelings of pride when we subscribe to the standards of

good behaviour. This part is important because it works at both the conscious and unconscious

levels, and it is of special interest in this analysis because of its implications on the characters of

the story. Let’s look at Marion Crane, who is portrayed to the audience as the protagonist for the

first 45 minutes of the film until her brutal murder in the shower of the Bates Motel. On the

surface, i.e. at the conscious level, she appears like a demure and respectable person who is

struggling to make ends meet. However, as the story unfolds, we begin to realize that all is not
what it seems with her. She steals 40,000 dollars of her client’s money and makes a run for it,

thus bringing to surface her unconscious desires of a married and settled life with the man she

loves, no matter the consequences. This is the moment of the Id taking over the Superego and

fulfilling its immoral desires.

This, as Freud would likely have put it, is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to

instances in the film where psychoanalytic theory can be applied. In order to understand these

instances, it is more than necessary to talk about Freud’s stages of psychosexual development:

oral, anal, phallic, latent, and genital. Personality is developed, Freud believed, through this

series of stages in our childhood, during which the Id focuses its pleasure-seeking energies on

certain erogenous zones. Each stage is marked by a conflict, or a fixation, that needs to be

resolved if the child is to have a healthy growth in personality. In the oral stage, which begins at

birth and goes on till the age of one, the mouth is the erogenous zone. The primary conflict here

is the reduction in the child’s dependence upon the caretaker. Left unresolved, it could lead to

issues with drinking, eating, smoking, nail-biting, and even dependency and aggression. The anal

stage focuses on controlling bowel and bladder moments, and personality issues resulting from

unresolved conflicts can lead to an obsessive nature. The phallic stage, which lasts from the ages

of 3 to 6 years, makes the genitals its primary focus. It is at this age where the Oedipus Complex

develops and leads to castration anxiety among males.

An important question raised by the film is – why did Norman Bates kill his own mother?

The answer lies in the phallic stage and its unresolved issues. It is likely that Bates developed a

powerful and potentially destructive Oedipal complex in the form of a strong attraction towards

his mother. However, unlike most males who resolve this complex by turning their attention to

other objects of desire, Bates was isolated from the rest of the world and suffered from the sore
absence of a father or father figure. With no means of resolving this complex, he becomes

possessive and insecure of his mother. He had no one but her for company for years, and when

she took a lover, Norman’s jealousy was triggered. When he says in the film, “a son is a poor

substitute for a lover”, he does so almost regretfully, as though the realization may have been a

life-altering one. Thus, it is plausible that one day, he witnessed his mother with her lover, and in

a fit of jealousy at the sight, murdered them both. The character also shows signs of other

fixation problems, specifically in instances where Bates is shown chewing (oral stage) and

speaking about his dependency on his mother as well as the other way around.

It is also worth noting Freud’s famous theory of repression at work in the film in the form

of his alter ego. Bates, due to the extremely sinful nature of the murder, represses his guilt by

giving birth to his mother’s personality, as if to pacify himself and keep her alive. To make it

more believable, he even talks and dresses like her, and eventually, gives the personality

psychologically appeasing motives to commit the rest of the murders.

In all truthfulness, it is easier to run out of words than it is to touch upon all the

psychoanalytic elements of Psycho. For all the criticisms leveled at Freud over the years from

academics around the world, one cannot say that his theories are difficult to apply in the real

world or in literature and films, especially the films of Alfred Hitchcock. Perhaps this is the

greatest criticism of all, that his perspective on the human psyche trivializes and oversimplifies

the intricacies of human nature – but it is the complication of these oversimplifications in the

hands of a master of suspense like Hitchcock that makes films like Psycho a masterful study in

the pseudo-science of psychoanalysis.

Works Cited:

Hitchcock, Alfred, Psycho, 1960, Universal.

Freud, Sigmund, “Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality”, 1905

Sandis, Constantine, “Hitchcock’s Conscious Use of Freud’s Unconscious”, Europe’s Journal of

Psychology, 2009