The Ruse of Norman Bates: A Mini-Essay

     In his analysis of Alfred Hitchcock’s legendary Psycho (1960), cinema scholar William Rothman proposes a unique interpretation of the famed film. After Norman Bates is arrested following the discovery of his mother’s corpse, the occurrences at the Bates Motel are revealed: Norman, who lived alone with his overbearing mother, jealously poisoned her and her boyfriend, preserved her body, and, suffering from a psychotic break, impersonated her. This information, as depicted in the movie, is divulged by the “mother” portion of Norman’s personality to the court psychiatrist who, subsequently, explains it to the main characters and the audience. It is here that Rothman’s interpretation begins. Because the psychiatrist did not witness the incidents firsthand and his understanding derives from what “mother” informs him, the psychiatrist’s explication, Rothman maintains, possesses a level of uncertainty.[1] Everything the psychiatrist learns depends on the validity of what “mother” has told him and, because only Norman knows the truth, the credibility of the account will never be wholly known. Hence, as Rothman argues, the main characters’ knowledge of the occurrences rest in their faith in the psychiatrist’s ability to discern fact from fiction and, furthermore, the psychiatrist’s knowledge rests in his faith in “mother” and her integrity.[2] Due to this factor, Norman’s story can be subject to skepticism, which is where Rothman makes his claim. Because no one will ever know the truth, Norman’s tale could be a complete fabrication invented by the young man in an effort to convince the psychiatrist and court that he is mentally unstable and unfit to stand trial.[3] As Rothman argues, the “mother” personality, the psychotic break, and other details of the strained relationship between mother and son never fully existed, but were inventions by Norman to fool the mental health expert into a plea of insanity. The fact that the psychiatrist believes the deception and passes it along to others as actuality only proves, the scholar reasons, that he has “been taken in by a performance, as were Marion, Arbogast, Sherriff Chambers, Sam, and Lila before him…perhaps we [the audience] too have been taken in by Norman.”[4]

Works Referenced

Rothman, William. Hitchcock: The Murderous Gaze. Cambridge: MA: Harvard University Press, 1982.
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[1] Rothman, 332.
[2] Rothman, 332-333.
[3] Rothman, 333.
[4] Rothman, 333.