Humanities

2/9/2018

Forum 1 – Humanities (Fall 2018)

Respond to ONE of the following questions. You must provide concrete examples from the psychoanalytic readings and the film to back up your analysis. Putting concepts in your own words is crucial, but you'll also want to integrate at least one relevant quotation from the texts in your response (include the page number in brackets). You are encouraged to both apply the concepts and look for ways to go beyond them: in what ways are they productive for reading the film, but in what ways may they fail to provide the entire story?  Finally, while this is an opportunity for you to try out ideas, keep your response as well-argued, focused, and clear as possible. There is no word count, but it would be difficult to answer any of these questions in under 250 words. Please identify at the beginning of your post which question you are answering in parentheses. For example: “(Question #2).” Good luck!

1) In "Dissection of the Personality," Freud provides a complex picture of the psyche as an invariable site of conflict. The ego is weak and frail, the superego is pitiless and terrifying, and repressed thoughts within the id are "virtually immortal." Human identity itself, based around cannibalistic incorporation of lost objects, is inherently unstable and ambivalent. Analyze a scene, space, or character in Psycho for the ways they embody concepts outlined in "Dissection of the Personality."

2) According to Melanie Klein, from infancy onwards, human beings are terrified by their vulnerability, dependency, and capacity for self-destruction. In response, two defensive positions are developed to make life more tolerable. The first, the paranoid-schizoid position, divides the world into absolute "good" and "bad," which allows the person to project all of their self-hatred and aggression onto the "bad" object, while keeping the "good" object safe from harm. The more developmentally advanced "depressive position" recognizes that the same object may be experienced as both "good" and "bad"--loving and withholding; caring and hostile. The depressive position, however, entails the fear that in a state of rage, the subject may destroy the object they rely upon, eliminating all goodness in the process. For Klein, we address what we hate in ourselves by projecting these hatreds outwards through processes such envious spoiling and projective identification. To heal our relationships from our destructive capacities, we then engage in reparations to try to keep "goodness" alive in our world. Analyze a character, or relationships between characters in Psycho, employing concepts drawn from Melanie Klein.

3) Near the end of Psycho, a psychiatrist provides a "psychoanalytic" explanation for Norman's behavior. Write a response to this "expert" that challenges some of his aspirations to certainty. That is, you should provide your own psychoanalytic reading of the case, but one that acknowledges the possibility of uncertainty and "opens up" the issues rather than closing them down. What do you think this psychiatrist may have got right, but what might he have missed? Your response may employ concepts drawn from any of the readings we have completed this term (Tyson through to Freud and Klein). As an alternative, write a psychoanalytic "case study" of any one character in the film (from Norman and Marion through to Sam, Lila, or even the psychiatrist himself). Again, try to open things up with your interpretation, rather than forcing them into a neat diagnostic box; you want to keep the complexity of the subjects at play in your reading. In your response, please consider psychic issues first and foremost, but also note how the psychic may be informed by the social such as conventions related to gender, sexuality, class, and power.

74 Comments

Victoria Caputo

6/9/2018 07:54:55 pm

(Question #1)

Similarly to “The Fall of the House of Usher”, the house in Psycho has significant meaning. In both cases, the protagonist’s mind is connected to their house. Although, in Psycho, it is more specifically the floors in the house that carry the most psychoanalytical meaning. The Bates house has 3 floors: the cellar, the first floor and the second floor. Three floors for the three parts of the mind: the id, the ego and the super-ego. The latter acts as our “conscience”, telling us what to do and what not to do. In his lecture “The Dissection of the Psychical Personality”, Freud describes the super ego as cruel, stating that the ego is “at its mercy” (page 60). In Psycho, the second floor represents the super-ego. Its where Norman keeps the corpse of his mother, who is the literal voice of his super-ego. We hear her shout obscenities and orders at Norman a few times throughout the film. For instance, she forbids him from having dinner with Marion, making him feel guilty for spending time with another woman. This reflects the behaviour of the super-ego, which, as Freud puts it, “represents demands of a restrictive and rejecting character”. (page 68) Our super-ego is constantly making us feel guilty, whether it’s because we don’t live up to the image the ego-ideal has created for us, or whether it’s because we gave in to our id’s primitive impulses. Another very intentional and interesting connection between the super-ego and the second floor involves Freud’s theory on the development of the super-ego. Freud states in his lecture that our super-ego develops from our parents. We internalize the cruel and violent aspects of our parents, creating this terrifying agency that constantly punishes us and tells us we will never be good enough. Norman’s mother acting as some sort of personification of the super-ego is quite clever when you consider how according to Freud, parental influence was essential to the creation and development of one’s super-ego. All this in mind, if you pay close attention to the house in Psycho, the underlying psychoanalytical aspects of the film become apparent. It’s clear that every floor in the Bates house was carefully and deliberately planned to mirror the three parts of the mind.

Julian Nemeth

16/9/2018 01:26:32 pm

Great work, Victoria. The only thing I would add is that it's not necessarily "intentional" for the filmmakers to design the house to reflect Freud's three agencies of the mind. To prove that, you would have to go back and read diaries of the writers or filmmaker. Luckily, you don't have to say it's intentional for it to still be there! You might have also provided a few more examples from the film about the nature of each floor's psychic space. Overall, very nice job, especially for a first post. ✓+

Hannah Di Francesco

6/9/2018 10:57:42 pm

(Question 1)
In the movie Psycho, we can see many of the characters have conflicts in between their id, ego and superego, but one characters conflict is vocalised. Norman Bates’s conflict with his mother can be heard throughout the whole movie. These actions all portray the mental fight that is going on within him. In his case, the superego shows itself through “the mother” a part of Normans conscience. For him, she keeps living in the form of his superego. All she does is criticize him, as the superego does. This part of the mind is masochistic and punishes the person, this can clearly be seen in the movie when we hear the screaming match between Norman and his mother about Marion. He is then guilty of spending time with another woman that he does not take her into the house, like Freud said: “the sense of guilt is an expression of the tension between them (the ego and the super ego)” (p.65) She is cruel and very strict to him. Norman himself is the ego, weak and frail, with no backbone. He cannot defend himself and stutters as soon as he gets uncomfortable. He is like a sane cover-up that the public sees to hide everything that is going on in his mind. The id is the only place where Norman and his mother can coexist without battling for dominance. It is timeless, so the mother is preserved as she was before her death. Also, like Freud mentioned: “contrary impulses exist side-by-side (in the id)” (p.72) and this is why there can be Norman and his mother together. The id is where he also gets his own ideas and passions, like for the girls, but the superego punishes him for them. This is why the mother is the one who kills the girls. He is sometimes so put down and terrified by this mother that he lets her take over completely and she takes all the decisions for him. This also happens when he does things that he cannot accept himself doing. His superego takes over, but he is still him killing the person. He cannot come to terms with the fact that he killed people so he blames his mother for doing it, he can’t cope with it otherwise.

Julian Nemeth

16/9/2018 01:32:48 pm

Very good work, Hannah. Your discussion of Norman's inner conflict in terms of Id, Ego, Supergo is quite on point. The only thing you might unpack a little more is at the end of your post when you get to the question of mother's violence. Does this speak to an inherent aggression in the superego (supposedly the moral voice)? How might we connect the aggressive impulse, which breaks all social norms, with the superego's restraining role? The answers may only be implicit in Freud's text, but I encourage you to push forward. Overall, very good job. ✓

Ameera Kabir

6/9/2018 11:24:35 pm

[Q.1]

I thought that Victoria made an interesting connection between the Bates Motel and Freud’s tripartite model of the mind, however, in my opinion, Norman Bates himself better represented the conflict between the Id, Ego and Superego.
We can safely assume that Norman perceives Marion as an object of desire (and she is portrayed as one throughout the movie as well). However, his sexuality is severely repressed and instead of his conscience delivering the “usual” internal criticism against these thoughts, Norman is yelled at by his “mother” which is him vocalizing his Superego. Moreover, he keeps his mother’s skeleton in his room and gives the skeleton her voice, thus bringing his Superego into the external world. His “mother” accuses him of having a “cheap, erotic” mind. She shames him and insults him yet Norman, instead of retaliating or defending himself, musters out a feeble “mother, please…”. This interaction shows to what extent Norman’s fearsome Superego dominates over his weak-willed Ego. The immortal/ageless quality of the Id comes into play when we consider that Norman might have killed other young women in the past due to his repressed sexual desires as well as his guilt towards killing his own mother. These repressed thoughts have followed him since his mother’s death. Despite her death happening over ten years ago, Norman continues to believe that his mother is alive and uses his Superego as her substitute; the very act of keeping her skeleton could signify that Norman is unconsciously surrendering his Ego to his Superego.
Another point that I would like to add is that Freud believes that the three components of personality overlapped with each other; in the “Dissection of Personality”, he describes this as the “areas of colour melting into one another as they are presented by modern artists” [p.78]. Yet, I am inclined to believe that that is not the case with Norman Bates. There is a clear dichotomy between the Ego (Norman) and the Superego (Norman’s mother). This split is so apparent that the Ego and Superego can not coexist as seen at the end of the movie when the Norman’s “mother’ seizes control over Norman’s psyche. I thought that this part was interesting as it went with the idea in the question that “human identity is based around the cannibalistic incorporation of lost objects”, but in this case, instead of the Superego merely absorbing part of Mrs. Bates’ personality, it eradicates Noman’s.

Julian Nemeth

16/9/2018 01:36:43 pm

Great work, Ameera. I especially liked how you noted the ways that Norman goes "beyond" the concepts outlined by Freud, especially in the clear splitting of the mental agencies, which points towards his psychosis. Indeed, he is much more like the "delusional" patients Freud mentions at the start of the text than the more typical "neurotics" that he focuses on analyzing. Please keep up the close reading and far-reaching analysis. ✓+

Meghan Rulli

7/9/2018 09:04:49 am

Question 3
Although a lot of the psychoanalytic focus in on Norman Bates, I think it would be interesting to move that focus on Marion Crane and her personality. If she wasn’t happy with her relationship with her boyfriend Sam Loomis, why didn’t she just leave him? What caused her to impulsively run off with the cash at the beginning of the movie? Would it have been different if the money wasn’t from Tom Cassidy, a man who was clearly flirting with her? I feel as though Marion was tired of the same old routine in Phoenix with her secretary job, she wanted to do something exciting, but repressed these wishes to get out of there. Marion stealing the money was definitely a way that these repressed wishes came out, and she wanted to be daring. The way that Tom Cassidy spoke to her before she left for work that day could also have an influence in this desire to run away. She was tired of being spoken down upon, which can also be viewed as a gender/power related issue since, in 1959, a lot of women’s rights were progressing, and she was frustrated that this was how she was being spoken to. She felt powerless in her relationship, in her job, in her life, which I believe was the reason as to why she went running off with the money. We can clearly identify the works of the id within Marion’s actions. In Freud’s lecture ‘The Dissection of the Psychical Personality’, he states “Where id was, there ego shall be” (p. 79). Her id was in the mindset of stealing the money, and it obviously took over the ego. We can recognize the switch back from the ego and id while Marion is driving away. There are scenes where she looks frantic, which can be seen as when her ego is kicking in, the reality of what she’s doing and how much trouble she’ll be in. There’s also a short scene, while she's driving, where she hears a conversation between her boss, George Lowery and Tom Cassidy, talk about what she did with the money, and she smirks, almost like the psychotic smile Norman makes at the end of the film. She clearly enjoyed the gain of power from stealing this large amount of money, and is now fantasizing the trouble she’s in. Freud states that the id “is filled with energy reaching it from the instincts, but it has no organization, produces no collective will, but only a striving to bring about the satisfaction of the instinctual needs subject to the observance of the pleasure principle” (p. 73). There was clearly no organization with Marion’s actions, which caused her to go to the Bates motel, which lead to her murder. Like Norman says “We all go a little mad sometimes”, and I believe that Marion — at this point in her life — went mad.

Julian Nemeth

16/9/2018 01:43:20 pm

Meghan,

First, let me say I'm so happy you wrote about Marion. I actually find her character more interesting than Norma, and I'm surprised that not more students wrote about her. You do a nice job unpacking some of the core issues she's facing, particularly when it comes to the sexual harassment she experiences from Tom Cassidy and the boredom of her experience in Phoenix more generally. Finally, I love your observation about her laugh in the car echoing that of Norman/mother. That said, I do think you could push this even further by examining the super-ego aspect of Marion's case. Indeed, the close-ups of the policeman and especially those conversations she plays in her head, suggest that her punishing moral voice, is coming into play, convincing her to back to her old life. This "neurotic" struggle is in sharp contrast to the psychosis experienced by Norman, but both of them also share the experience of the "inner voice." Finally, note that "where id was, there ego shall be" refers to Freud's view that therapy could help a person "master" their id impulses by bringing them into consciousness instead of repressing them. Overall, a very good response. I'm looking forward to reading more of your character analyses. ✓

Julia Prud'Homme

7/9/2018 09:49:18 am

Question 1
To begin, I completely agree with Ameera’s reply and also couldn’t help but notice a similarity between Norman Bates’ character and Freud’s explanation of the ego’s rivalry in a sense with the super ego. The way I saw the film, Norman’s “mother” has always acted as a sort of physical representation of the super ego towards him. In Freud’s lecture on “The Dissection of Physical Personality” (page 60), he describes the super ego as cruel to the ego, as something that is extremely severe and, to put it simply, mean. The super ego is that which represses the wishes that don’t conform to social construct. In “Psycho”, we can tell right when Marian meets Norman that his “mother” is quite severe towards him. When he wants to have dinner with Marian, you hear his “mother” shout at him about how he is not allowed to do that, and he obeys, repressing his wish of having perhaps a relationship with Marian. He expresses with anger that his “mother” is often like that, and how he wishes he could escape, but cannot and still respects his “mother” (enough not to put her in a home). In this case, he is the weakened ego being attacked by the “super ego” which is actually himself. It’s as if, when his mother died, he couldn’t handle his wishes (his id no longer had a rival), so to repress them he created mentally a separate person (his mother) to do what she has always done, which is to repress them. When he murdered his mother, it was out of anger, but once she was gone he had no sense of right and wrong (this sense is controlled by the super ego, as Freud explains on page 59 of “The Dissection of Physical Personality”) and so he had to recreate his mother within himself. In conclusion, as Freud explains, once again in “The Dissection of Physical Personality” (page 75), “… the pleasure principle which dominates the course of events in the id without any restriction…”, I believe that Norman’s id was pushing him to have relationships with these women, and since he had no sense of right and wrong with his mother gone he created one within his own head, in the exact form of his mother, since she had always been the severe figure that repressed his wishes. He needed the restriction from his wishes.

Julian Nemeth

16/9/2018 01:50:48 pm

This is a solid response, Julia. I do think you might have pushed it even further by noting Freud's contrast in the text between the authority of parents' for small children, before the development of the super-ego, and the way they become "unconsciously" internalized through identification in later childhood. This way, you could have emphasized the failure of incorporation in Norman's case; it's as though he "swallowed" his mother (as Freud suggests happens with identification), but didn't actually "digest" her. Overall, solid work, but I encourage you to push further in future responses. ✓

Vanessa Amar

7/9/2018 09:36:42 pm

Question 2

Klein explains how initially infants can only see the world as either “good” or “bad”. However, they later enter the depressive position where they begin to see ambiguity in the “goodness” of objects. As a result, the child then begins to have fantasies of destroying the object that is both “good” and “bad”. In the text “Melanie Klein and Contemporary Kleinian Theory”, the author says that “the state of the infant following a fantasy of rageful destruction toward the frustrating mother is one of deep remorse” (page 95) This means that once the thoughts of destructiveness has subsided, the child begins to have reparative fantasies in which he “makes the mother whole again.”
Although Melanie Klein’s theory is centred around infants, it seems as though it is particularly fitting when speaking of Norman Bates since he seemed to have never properly matured mentally. This is extremely evident from the very first interaction we have with Bates as viewers; he acts in an incredibly childish manner.
I believe that Norman continued to have a depression position regarding his mom. He saw her as both “good” since she was his mother, but “bad” because she was also incredibly abusive. His destructive fantasies became real as he went through with them resulting in the death of his mother. However, these fantasies eventually passed and the need for reparation settled in. I believe that he could not cope with the fact that he had truly killed his mother. Therefor as a defence mechanism, he created a fictitious version of her to “make her whole again”. This allowed him to feel less remorse regarding his mom and to preserve the goodness in her.

Julian Nemeth

16/9/2018 01:56:10 pm

Nice connection to the depressive position, Vanessa. I agree that the way Norman keeps mother alive can very much be seen as an example of an attempt at reparations; to make the victim of his vengeful rage whole again. That said, please note that Klein saw both the paranoid-schizoid and depressive positions as universal qualities of human experience that frequently returned in adulthood. Also note that your analysis could be complicated by the fact that Norman, in fact, still relies heavily on splitting: there is the "good" (but persecutory) mother and the "bad" (but attractive) "woman" (Marian). By using Klein as a jumping off point, but then going into Norman's complexities, which exceed the strict positions she offers, your post would be even more insightful. Overall, solid work. ✓

Kelly Rosialda

7/9/2018 10:34:15 pm

(Question 2)

Norman Bates, “Psycho” is a pure and literal representation of the concepts seen in the contemporary Kleinian theory. Once we analyze the movie and are aware that Norman has two sets of personalities, we are able to clearly perceive this phenomenon notably through his relationship and battles within himself.
His mind is being divided and shared with the one of his dead mother who he has revived, creating an acute attachment. His perceptions, very contradicting to his mother’s, embodies the battle between love and hate seen in the depressive position. In fact, when Marion first arrived to the Bates Motel, we can deduce that he is intrigued by this young lady as he tries to seduce her. His “mother” not willing to share his son with any other woman, feeling threatened to be replaced due to jealousy denies such feelings. Actively trying to decide whether his love or hate is greater towards the “object” and although his efforts into believing that he loves Marion, feeble and unassertive, he results to retreating to the paranoid-schizoid position.
The “mother” being more powerful than Norman himself takes over when in the paranoid-schizoid position, creating a treacherous environment as the only result is the association to the “bad breast”. That being said, Norman’s perception also known as the “good breast” is nonexistent, hence why Marion is directly associated as a menace and is literally eliminated from Norman’s world.
With this being portrayed and as Vanessa pointed out, we can sense a certain puerility in Norman since he is unable to shift into the depressive position as “the child experiences her rage as more powerful than her reparative love” (p.96) and as he has no other choice but to constantly resort to his mother’s decisions, either unwilling or incapable of “growing up.”

Julian Nemeth

16/9/2018 02:24:00 pm

Kelly,

There's so much potential in this response. You're starting to get at very insightful points about Norman's outlook and you are 100% right to look back to concepts such as splitting, object-choice, and reparations. I do think you could take this work further with clearer definitions of some of your key terms and an even stronger sense of how each one applies to Norman's evolving attitude towards Marion. I encourage you to keep going back to these concepts this term (particularly the idea of envy and its destructive qualities). Looking forward to watching your work evolve. ✓-

Marilena Mignacca

8/9/2018 06:50:19 pm

(Question 4)

During the psychiatrist's analysis of Norman’s situation, he mentioned something, that is clear a lot of viewers would believe as well, that Norman’s mother was jealous of the fact that he was giving attention to another woman, getting close with her and it’s because of this jealousy that drove her to kill Marion after. When Norman, whom I feel represents the ego himself, was taken over by his superego, his mother, she would get rid of the problem herself but could this really all be out of jealousy? Or maybe there’s a sense of vengeance? When Norman’s mother was getting close with a man, Norman became jealous and felt that she was abandoning him, so he killed them both. Norman felt guilty, so to deal with this sense, he pretended that half of him belonged to his mother, bringing her “back to life”. In Freud’s reading about “The Dissection of the Psychical Personality”, he mentions “our moral sense of guilt is the expression of the tension between the ego and the super-ego". So, in order for Norman to release that tension, he gave his other half to his mother, allowing her to live his life since he took hers. However, even with this sense of “rebirth”, she still doesn’t forgive him for what he did. She was able to have control of his mind, take over the ego and have the superego, so she took advantage of it. If she wasn’t allowed to have a man in her life other than Norman, why should he be allowed to have another woman in his life other than her? Norman’s mother could tell that he was already wanting to get closer with Marion when he told her that he wanted to invite her over for dinner. Hearing this, his mother quickly shut him down preventing any sort of comfort they would have together and so that nothing further could happen. In addition to killing the woman he has an interest in, she also mentally killed Norman as well. At the end of the movie, the psychiatrist says that Norman is gone and that the mother has now completely taken over, “the dominant personality has won” he states, and the movie ends with the mother smiling, as if she got the final vengeance; killed her son like he killed her. The psychiatrist ‘s view on this situation was strong, but there could’ve been other possibilities that played into the fact.

Marilena Mignacca

8/9/2018 06:51:14 pm

(question 3)****

Julian Nemeth

16/9/2018 02:28:46 pm

Marilena,

This is a very good response. I particularly like the fact that you go beyond the psychiatrist's explanation by making the reasonable argument that just like Norman killed mother out of jealousy,now the law of talion ensure that 'mother' won't let him be with another women, and also "murders" him in a sense. This also connects with Freud's assertion, in Totem and Taboo, that the murdered parent becomes more powerful than the one that is alive. That said, the line about Norman "pretending" was a little confusing (he seems to really believe everything that is happening) and there needs to be page numbers for quotes. Overall, nice job. ✓+

Isabeli Pizzani

9/9/2018 09:02:43 am

Question 1

While watching Pycho, as Victoria and Ameera, I too was intrigued by the link between the mother and Norman’s superego. Having a severe and controlling mother, Norman’s super-ego was conceived as strict and suffocating. But, I don’t think Norman’s mother only represents his super-ego. Or even that Norman’s incorporation of his mother can be called “his mother”, since the “character” that he gives us is created based on Norman’s point of view. And, because as Freud said in "Dissection of the Personality": “The super-ego seems to have made a one-sided choice and to have picked out only the parents' strictness and severity, their prohibiting and punitive function, whereas their loving care seems not to have been taken over and maintained.” (page 61) As we heard from the psychiatrist: “he was so pathologically jealous of her, he assumed that she was jealous of him”. His super-ego definitely is accentuated while “the mother” takes over Norman’s body.
The psychiatrist also said at the end of the movie that Norman was very attached to his mother, therefore he wanted to have her only for him. So, when Mrs. Bates met a man, Norman had the impression that “she threw him over for this man”. So, he killed both of them. After losing his mother, Bates incorporates his lost object by creating a second personality, based on his perception of Mrs. Bates’s.
We can also say that Norman may see his mother as a representation of the restrictions and the cruelty within his own self. Bates might also have projected, not only his jalousie, but also his cruelty on his mother. He brings her back to life, so he doesn’t lose his defences. After all, after killing his mother, he had a hard time dealing with his loss, as the psychiatrist stated. Also, Norman may be embodying his mother, as a way for his repressed wishes to manifest themselves.

Julian Nemeth

16/9/2018 02:32:19 pm

There are some excellent observations here, Isabeli. The best one, which you could do even more to highlight, is that the "mother" we see in the film may have very little, if any, bearing on the actual mother Norman had in his life. This is also supported by Freud's point that children with lenient parents may still end up with very severe super-egos as compensation. You include a very interesting final sentence, but one that should be more developed with at least a few examples. Overall, though, nice job. ✓

Jade Karakaly

9/9/2018 11:13:15 am

Question 1
I want to start by saying that I agree with Julia and Ameera on the fact that a particular character in Psycho portrays the rivalry between the ego and the superego as Freud theorises in ‘’The Dissection of the Psychical Personality’’. This character is Norman Bates. As Freud explains: ‘’the super-ego takes the place of the parental agency and observes, directs and threatens the ego in exactly the same way as earlier the parents did with the child’’. We could see this explanation being applied on Norman’s relationship with his dead mother who is also a personification of Norman’s super-ego. Indeed, we witnessed a lot of Bates’s desires who arise from his ego being denied and repressed by his super-ego which is how his mother would normally act. For instance, Norman Bates proposed to Marion to have dinner at his place and then his mother, his super-ego, repressed this desire which was represented by the argument between Norman and his mother when she refuses that Norman brings Marion home. Basically, all of the discussions between Norman and his mother are a physical representation of the conflict between the ego and the super-ego of the owner of the motel. To continue, Freud explained that the id is mostly composed of the aggressiveness and sexual desires of the mind. It is clear that Norman’s id, habited by his mother’s and his, was constructed out of these two components. Effectively, the sexual part of Norman’s id was when he was attracted to Marion. Now we could think that it was his ego’s will but the fact that he acted childish could make us believe that it was his id being in action knowing that the id is timeless as Freud explains in his Lecture XXXI: ‘’ There is nothing in the id that corresponds to the idea of time; there is no recognition of the passage of time, and—a thing that is mostly remarkable and awaits consideration in philosophical thought—no alteration in its mental process is produced by the passage of time’’ (p.73). Also, the aggressivity is present and we could link it to his mother’s id. Indeed, he would always impersonate his mother when he had to do something aggressive. For instance, every time he murdered someone, he dressed up as his mother as if it was her that killed the person.

Julian Nemeth

16/9/2018 02:36:11 pm

This is really good starting point for an analysis of Norman's relationship with mother. I like the way you theorize the deep interconnection between Norman/Mother's id/superego. That said, this would be much more effective with a clearer sense of the links you are trying to establish with the timelessness of the Id and who exactly you mean by "mother" (Norman's "actual" mother or his creation of mother?). If you worked on unpacking these concepts further, this could be an excellent post. ✓

Angele Wen

9/9/2018 12:54:45 pm

Question 2

In Melanie Klein's first example on paranoid-schizoid position, we read that one dream can have two faces. The “good”, which is the flower, and the “bad”, which is the shit people. This resembles the situation in Psycho. Norman represents the good, he is nice and welcoming to Marion, while his mother represents the bad, as she was jealous of her and kills her to keep her son to herself. We could associate Norman to the flower, the mother to the shit people and the body of Norman would be the dream itself. Even though the mother and son have very different personalities, they belong to the same body. Just like Melanie Klein stated: “The images were as opposite as could be imagined, yet Rachel felt they belonged together.” (p.89). With the mother, Norman can stay the good boy he thinks he is and project all the bad things he did on her. This way, he can feel less guilty of his murders, just like Vanessa said.

Humans are usually a mix of good and bad, but Norman divided himself in two because of his mental illness. He couldn't find balance in between, thus he has to build himself a past in the present. He makes the “bad”, which is his mother, come back after killing her so he could lie to himself thinking he didn't do the murder. But as murders add up, his mother takes more control over his mind and body. At the end, the character of the movie was incarcerated and the mother takes whole control of the body. We could feel that Norman was entirely gone. He failed at keeping his “good” self.

Julian Nemeth

16/9/2018 02:41:12 pm

This is a very strong response, Angele. I love your evocative use of language, particularly the idea of a struggle over Norman's body. You also nicely apply the Kleinian concept of paranoid-schizoid position through the connection with Rachel's dream from the text. I do think this response would be even more effective with a quick definition of the paranoid-schizoid position before mentioning the dream to explain it. I also think near the end you might mention something about Norman's inability to make reparations, which allowed mother, and the "bad" that she represented to take over. You might also note how the bad, interestingly, connects so closely to the superego. Finally, note that the quotes comes from Mitchell and Black's book, not Klein herself. Overall, though, I'm impressed by the sophistication and clarity of your insights. Nice job. ✓

David Boghen

9/9/2018 01:58:59 pm

(Question 3)

During the penultimate scene, the psychiatrist comes to many conclusions about the state of Norman Bates’ mind and why he would commit such heinous crimes as the murders of Marion Crane and the detective. He does not, however, find the means to justify Norman’s most heinous crime of all, the murder of his own mother. All that he says—and we must keep in mind that everything he knows is based on what Norman, who is in an extremely disturbed state of mind, tells him—is that Norman had been “dangerously disturbed” ever since his father had died. When his mother met another man, after she and Norman had been living together for years, it seemed to Norman that she “threw him over” for this man. Now, however hurt he must have been when he started to become less important to his mother than this new lover, he must have been repressing some pretty traumatic emotions from his father’s death for him to react in the way that he did. In Lois Tyson’s textbook, Critical Theory Today: A User Friendly Guide, she writes the following: “Repression doesn’t eliminate our painful experiences and emotions. Rather, it gives them force by making them the organizers of our current experience.” Norman had always hated his mother, and when his father left him alone with her his hatred grew even stronger. The question of why Norman kept his mother around after her death is also quite intriguing. According to the psychiatrist, Norman pretended she was still alive to “erase the crime, at least in his own mind”. I believe that he also kept her around as a form of displacement, to justify the matricide, by saying that she was the jealous one who couldn’t stand to see him become emotionally attached to another woman, when in fact he was the one who had originally committed murder because of those similar feelings of jealousy. The whole movie seems to paint a picture that blames the mother, even though the only thing that we know that she did is meet a new man, which drew her attention away from Norman. Therefore, it seems to me that Norman, throughout the movie, is trying to convince us that he had no say in the horrific events that take place but that he is haunted by the memory of his mother and is powerless to stop her from getting her revenge. I agree with Marilena when she wrote about the end of movie, that the psychiatrist’s view on the situation was strong, but I believe that the final smile on Norman’s face is not his mother’s satisfaction in achieving vengeance but rather Norman’s satisfaction from having convinced everyone, even himself, that he was not to blame for the crimes that he committed.

Julian Nemeth

16/9/2018 02:49:12 pm

Excellent work, David. The thing I like most about this post is that you highlight that the film seems to highlight the monstrous mother's role in the murders (a common trope during the 1950s when overbearing mother's were unfairly blamed for many societal issues) but that, in fact, this is clearly just Norman's interpretation of mother. We know nothing about the real mother from what we see in the film (though the psychitrist somehow knows she was "demanding and clinging"). All we know is that she chose to be with a man after her husband's death and that this was something Norman found intolerable. Your points about trauma and displacement are well-made (though I'm not sure we know that Norman has hated his mother his whole life; in fact, he tells that he only hates "what she has become"; this could mean, however, he hates what she became after she was with a man other than him or his biological father). This is a long way to say I appreciated the originality and thoughtfulness of this post. Nice job. ✓+

Ruhullah Muhtat

9/9/2018 02:36:37 pm

Question 1
I think Victoria made a good connection between the Id, Ego and Superego and Norman’s house. I agree with the fact that the house is a symbol of Norman’s mind, however, in my opinion, the house only symbolises Norman’s Superego. According to Victoria, the house’s cellar represents Norman’s Id, but I think there isn’t any correlation between them. If we consider that Norman got aroused and wanted Marion when she came to Bates Motel, there is no doubt that Norman’s Id gave him the thought to have dinner with her. As Freud describes the Id in The dissection of the Psychical Personality: “It is filled with energy reaching it from the instincts, but it has no organization, produces no collective will, but only a striving to bring about the satisfaction of the instinctual needs subject to the observance of the pleasure principle.” [page 72]. Therefore, Norman’s Id can be linked to the motel instead of the cellar.
Taking a closer look to the scene where Norman meets Marion for the first time we can make further observations on the symbolism of space and its correlation with Norman’s Id, Ego and Superego. When Marion first arrives at Bates Motel, she is welcomed by Norman who seems to be amazed at Marion’s beauty. When Marion tells him that she is hungry, Norman’s Id gives his Ego the idea to have dinner with her, but after consulting her mom (Superego) at his house, Norman comes back to the motel defeated by his Superego. Therefore, Norman’s house symbolises the Superego since it is inside the house that Norman’s Ego gets crushed by the pressure and control the Superego has over him and rejects the idea to have dinner with Marion. This scene, where Norman goes back and forth from the motel to the house, portrays very well the hardship that the Ego goes through by trying to please the Id and the Superego. Also, when Norman’s Ego realises he can’t have dinner with Marion, he still stays and talk with her in the office. By doing so, Norman’s Ego stays away from the Superego (symbolised by the house) and can “fulfill” in a way his Id’s wish.

Julian Nemeth

16/9/2018 02:52:47 pm

This is a solid response. I like that you are engaging with another student's work. And it's true that the earlier post didn't mention *how* the cellar represented the Id. Still, if we think about the fact that Norman literally caries his mother down the stairs to the cellar, it's not hard to make a connection to the idea that he is attempting to "repress" her into this dank "fruity" space. It's also not clear why Norman having dinner with Marion, in and of itself, represents the Id. In fact, during their conversation, he comes across, most of the time, as quite reasonable and caring--a far cry from the quote you employ about the Id. Still, overall, solid work. Excellent work, David. The thing I like most about this post is that you highlight that the film seems to highlight the monstrous mother's role in the murders (a common trope during the 1950s when overbearing mother's were unfairly blamed for many societal issues) but that, in fact, this is clearly just Norman's interpretation of mother. We know nothing about the real mother from what we see in the film. All we know is that she chose to be with a man after her husband's death and that this was something Norman found intolerable. Your points about trauma and displacement are well-made (though I'm not sure we know that Norman has hated his mother his whole life; in fact, he tells that he only hates "what she has become"; this could mean, however, he hates what she became after she was with a man other than him or his biological father). This is a long way to say I appreciated the originality and thoughtfulness of this post. Nice job. ✓

Jenna Howor

9/9/2018 03:16:47 pm

(Question 2)
Concepts from Melanie Klein can be employed to analyse Norman and his behavior. Norman demonstrates the paranoid-schizoid position when his mother took a new lover, he began to feel abandoned by her and jealous he was losing all of her attention. I believe that when this happened, he began to separate his love and hate, he viewed his mother as “the good” and her lover as “the bad”. This allowed him to project all his anger, jealousy and hatred onto her new lover and keep his mother in a “box” of goodness.

Afterwards he started to develop the depressive position and was able to see that within the two of them there was good and bad. As much as he loved his mother and felt needed by her, he was allowing her to hurt him. In a fit of rage, his hatred took over and destroyed all the “goodness”, killing his mother and her lover. He destroyed his mother who he was dependant on and gave him a sense of purpose.

Norman says “I don’t hate my mother. I hate what she’s become.” This can be interpreted as when he began to realise that he was projecting hatred and jealousy onto his mother, causing her to no longer solely be viewed as a “good” object. He also projected all the bad within himself, all his murderous behaviors, onto his mother as Angele stated above.

In an attempt to repair the damage that he had caused, as a sign of “reparation”, he tried to keep his mother alive and allow her to live through himself. She was the “goodness” in his world. Like Vanessa, I too believe he could not bear the reality that he was responsible for her death. He states "there's no sense dwelling on our losses” because he sees he sees no point in dwelling on the loss of his mother since to him she is still alive, living through him in his mind. He desperately tried to repress what he had done and pretend as if it never happened and she was still alive.

Julian Nemeth

16/9/2018 03:11:59 pm

There are many great ideas in this post, Jenna. I also appreciate the way you have connected your insights to earlier posts. Please keep up the good work. I think this post would have been even more effective if you just pushed your analysis of Norman's current, ambivalent (?), attitude towards his mother just a little further. Also make sure to include at least one quotation, with page number in your responses. Overall, though, a very smart response. Excellent work, David. The thing I like most about this post is that you highlight that the film seems to highlight the monstrous mother's role in the murders (a common trope during the 1950s when overbearing mother's were unfairly blamed for many societal issues) but that, in fact, this is clearly just Norman's interpretation of mother. We know nothing about the real mother from what we see in the film. All we know is that she chose to be with a man after her husband's death and that this was something Norman found intolerable. Your points about trauma and displacement are well-made (though I'm not sure we know that Norman has hated his mother his whole life; in fact, he tells that he only hates "what she has become"; this could mean, however, he hates what she became after she was with a man other than him or his biological father). This is a long way to say I appreciated the originality and thoughtfulness of this post. Nice job. ✓

Cato Usher

9/9/2018 03:18:57 pm

2. According to Melanie Klein’s theory of defensive positions, one’s psyche cannot house the paranoid-schizoid position after it has grown to develop the depressive position, because the former is considered characteristically infantile, whereas the latter is seen as more mature. Keeping this theory in mind, Norman Bates proves to be an even more interesting character than originally perceived. Klein mentions that the development of the depressive position brings a sense of fear to the subject, because now that they can acknowledge that the object that brings happiness can also bring pain, they may destroy said object in a fit of rage.
Bates developed the depressive position sometime before the events of the film take place, eventually killing the object of his pain and happiness characterized as his abusive, yet occasionally loving mother.
After murdering her, Norman’s relatively developed psyche regressed from the depressive position back to the paranoid-schizoid position, leaving him once again unable to identify one object as both good and bad. This is best displayed through the very last scene: Bates is scene wrapped in a blanket in the police station, in the middle of an inner monologue as his “Mother” personality. “he intended to tell them I killed those girls and that man... as if I could do anything but just sit and stare, like one of his stuffed birds”, he tells himself, ending the film with “Why, she wouldn’t even harm a fly…”. This shows the viewer that even with Mother dead, Bates is unable to associate her with “bad”, claiming her as innocent, unable to harm a fly.

Julian Nemeth

16/9/2018 03:15:32 pm

This is a solid response, Cato. Note, however, that Klein theorized that it was typical for people to regress back to both positions at different points in their lives. The post would have also been more effective if it has engaged with other responses that had employed Klein (i.e. Angele). Finally, I would have liked to see a little more elaboration on key concepts, and a quotation from the text. All that said, there are some sharp points here, and I look forward to reading your future work. Excellent work, David. The thing I like most about this post is that you highlight that the film seems to highlight the monstrous mother's role in the murders (a common trope during the 1950s when overbearing mother's were unfairly blamed for many societal issues) but that, in fact, this is clearly just Norman's interpretation of mother. We know nothing about the real mother from what we see in the film. All we know is that she chose to be with a man after her husband's death and that this was something Norman found intolerable. Your points about trauma and displacement are well-made (though I'm not sure we know that Norman has hated his mother his whole life; in fact, he tells that he only hates "what she has become"; this could mean, however, he hates what she became after she was with a man other than him or his biological father). This is a long way to say I appreciated the originality and thoughtfulness of this post. Nice job. ✓-

Emily Trankarov

9/9/2018 03:19:17 pm

(Question 2)

I absolutely agree with many of the previous responses which focus on the paranoid-schizoid phenomenon and more precisely the depressive position. I will however attempt to analyze certain more precise points of Klein’s theory here which will hopefully complement the anterior reflections of my peers.

As a general rule it is those whom we love and care about the most who hurt us the most. For Norman, that was initially his mother. Whom he, as Klein would put it, felt too great of a rageful destructiveness towards and wiped out. That same vicious feeling reappears with Marion and later we understand with two more young women previously. Obviously, he ‘wiped them out’ as well. Perhaps, that’s the way he’s learned to cope with women towards whom he feels a certain form of attraction or affection towards. In addition, Norman complaining about the oppressiveness of his mother’s character to Marion is a manifestation of the manic defence within him. He unconsciously tries to deny his dependancy on her.
Continuing on with the assumption brought up by Vanessa that Norman acts in a childish manner because he has never quite matured out of a child phase, we can safely apply the following quote from Melanie Klein and the contemporary Kleinian Theory (p.95) to him,
“In the best of circumstances, the cycles of loving, frustration, hateful destruction, and reparation deepen the child’s ability to remain related to whole objects, to feel that her reparative capacities can balance and compensate for her destructiveness.” The murder of Marion is a shocking example of how that cycle has infiltrated Bate’s actions and responses to events. For example, he loves the idea of being with Marion, he’s frustrated by his lust for her, he kills her to destroy her out of hate for what she’s made him feel, and finally acts shocked when he returns in her cabin and cleans up the crime scene to ‘reparate’ whats he’s committed.

Julian Nemeth

16/9/2018 03:19:13 pm

This is a very strong post, Emily. I think you are getting at some really insights into Norman's attitude towards women, which have been neglected in other posts. That said, this response would have been even more effective with just a little more elaboration, particularly on the key issue of making reparations. Overall, though, good job. ✓

Idia Boncheva

9/9/2018 03:33:34 pm

(Question 1)
One of the biggest risk Hitchcock took when directing this movie was killing off the main character, Marion Crane, mid-way through the plot. As an homage to Janet Leigh’s performance of a young woman living in the 60’s, I’m going to analyse her character through Freudian glasses.
From the beginning, we understand that she isn’t 100% satisfied with her love life, which could have played a part in her rebellious escape. Her day was going by smoothly but once she gets to the office, where she has been working for the past 10 years, she has an important conversation with Tom Cassidy. In my opinion, something in Marion was triggered when Tom said: ‘’You know what I do about unhappiness? I buy it off’’. I think that at that moment, Tom planted an idea in her. She thought that if she stole the money, all her problems would go away –her boring suffocative routine would be broken, and she would be free.
In this situation, the money represents her id, which acts on pleasure, self preservation and greed. So although Marion knows what she’s doing is wrong, she gives into the temptation, regardless of what her superego is saying. We can clearly see that duality when Marion is packing her things to leave town with her money. In fact, this scene is a perfect staging of Freud’s theory on the dissected psychical personality. Marion is in her room, there’s a picture of her parents in the background looking over her shoulder (superego), there’s the money on the bed (id) and Marion (ego) keeps looking back and forth between the two, wondering what choice she should make. As Freud said it himself: ’’The ego, driven by the id, confined by the super-ego, repulsed by reality, struggles to master its economic task of bringing about harmony among the forces and influences working in upon it…’’(page 77). Finally, Marion’s superego comes back into play when she decides, right before dying, that she should go back to Phoenix to try and fix the mess she has made.

Julian Nemeth

16/9/2018 03:26:26 pm

This is a solid response, Idia. I especially like your dissection of the scene in Marion's home with the image of her parents, the money, and her stuck in between the two. I'm also happy that you wrote about Marion, who for some reason was neglected in this forum. You might have pushed this even further by noting the superego elements of the thoughts she has in the car and the embodiment of cultural values as represented by the police man. Finally, I think you might have pushed the gendered angle of Marion's story even further. One more thing: please make sure to note how you are building on earlier forum posts (in this case, you could have went into dialogue with Meaghan's). Overall, though, this is smart work. Keep it up. ✓

Lyna Ikram Bayou

9/9/2018 03:34:33 pm

(Question 2)
Norman Bates clearly has some core issues dating back to his childhood. Living with his demanding, jealous and repressive mother affected him badly. I particularly liked Vanessa’s comment on Norman not having fully matured mentally because I also perceived him as a grown man with a child-like behavior; the way he speaks, his body language and his adoration and attachment to his mother give that impression. Therefore, it seems to me like Norman often retreats to a paranoid-schizoid position where he idolizes his mother. Despite all the torment she put him through he perceives her as a good thing in the world and acts conforming to her orders. Accordingly, although Klein’s studies are mostly based on infants, seeing as Norman is still somehow in an infant psychological development state, I can understand why such a concept could apply to him.
He separated his mother and her illness into entirely good and entirely bad. When Norman states: “I don’t hate her. I hate what she's become. I hate the illness”. She, following Klein’s analogy, represents the “good breast” and her illness is the “bad breast”, threatening him and his mother. This splitting allows him to love his mother by projecting the negative aspects into another objet because “it is somewhat less dangerous to feel that malevolence is located outside oneself, in an object from which one can escape, than inside oneself, from which there is no escape”(p.93). He’s refusing to accept that his mother can be both good and bad, consequently stopping himself from transitioning to the depressive position.
Moreover, Norman Bates is using projective identification to repress his own perception of himself. For instance, when he insists that his mom needs him, Norman is truly saying that he needs her, hence the reason why he kept her “alive” in the cellar. Later on, when Marion mentions the idea of institutionalizing Mrs. Bates, Norman immediately gets defensive about it, defending his mother and deprecating these mental institutions. By doing so, it seemed to me that he was actually expressing the denial of his own mental state. The psychiatrist at the end states that Norman was pathologically jealous of his mother, which led him to believe that it was really his mother who was jealous of him.

Julian Nemeth

16/9/2018 03:36:13 pm

Very nice work, Lyna. I particularly appreciate your application of the concept of projective identification, which applies really well here. I do think that you might have said just a little more on where exactly Norman project the "bad" (presumably onto the women he kills?) but overall, good job. ✓

Larissa Szaniszlo-Luty

9/9/2018 03:40:02 pm

Question #2

In Norman’s childhood, his mother always made him feel insignificant and like he wasn’t good enough so when he finally found the courage to kill her, he not only lost his mother but also the “object” that he had been projecting his fears onto. Due to the fact that he had been conditioning himself to associate “bad” with his mother, he felt the need to recreate this and did so by becoming her. When he was his mother, he was embodying the “bad” — he was the personification of his fears and his loneliness or in other words, he projected his fears (through projective identification) onto his embodiment of his mother. He projected what he hated within himself (his loneliness, guilt, fears) onto his mother and in the process, surrounded himself with the qualities he hated most about himself.

When he was himself, he perceived it as the “good” and associated it with the good son who listened to and obeyed his mother; thus cleaning after her murders (cleaning the bathroom where Marion was found) and taking care to not expose her to the outside world (by hiding her in the fruit cellar, as he’s done in the past).

Norman seemed to have a very immature mental state considering he depended on the paranoid-schizoid position; he completely separated the “good” and the “bad” by projected them onto similar objects (the objects being himself and his mother and he housed both of them in his mind). “She saw libidinal and aggressive impulses not as discrete tensions, but as entire ways of experiencing oneself, as “good” (both loved and loving) or as “bad” (both hated and destructive).” (Page 91, Melanie Klein and Contemporary Kleinian Theory) This quote explains that in this position, a person completely dissociates the “good” from the “bad” and in fact sees them as two separate beings; like Norman sees himself and his mother. By relying on the paranoid-schizoid position to explain the “good” and “bad”, he understood that his actions do in fact have consequences but he didn’t feel guilty about them while he was himself because he felt as though he can put the blame on his mother.

When he was talking with Marion he had said, “I wish you could apologize for people.” This quote shows proof that he did in fact try to make reparations even though he didn’t necessarily blame himself for the murders; this could potentially show that he is evolving from the paranoid-schizoid position to the depressive. All in all, Norman attempts to keep the “good” in him safe from the “bad” but in my opinion, there’s only so much he can do considering the fact that he is holding his mother’s wishes so close to his heart and in turn, acting upon them. As Vanessa said, he felt the need to make his mother whole again and in a sense, I agree with her. Norman felt the need to repair what he had done and in this case, it was killing his mother but, in order to restore his life back to its ‘normal,’ he kept causing more damage and putting the blame on the personality found inside his mind.

Julian Nemeth

16/9/2018 03:43:29 pm

Great post. Very effective use of projective identification and other Kleinian concepts. I do think you could push this just a little further by acknowledging the role of Norman's murderous destructiveness. Where does his murder of Marion, for instance, fit into his splitting? I do think you're getting towards this question, but you could make it more explicit. Overall, nice job. ✓

Taina Dushime

9/9/2018 04:41:54 pm

(Question 2)
I see a lot of similarities between the movie ‘’Psycho’’ and Melanie Klein’s paranoid-schizoid position theory. In the text ‘’Melanie Klein and Contemporary Kleinian Theory’’ it’s explained that, Rachel, a disrupted waitress, would often think of two images; delicate flowers and shit people. To her, ‘’The two images were bound together in a way she did not understand’’ (p.88) and ‘’It was if there were a magnetic force drawing them together, but an even more powerful force, as with magnets of the same pole, keeping them apart’’ (p.89). To me, this is exactly the relationship between Norman and his mother. You see, since Norman is keeping his mother alive inside of him, the two personalities are drawn to each other with no other option than belonging together. The great force that is keeping them apart is actually a great belief. Norman believes he’s ‘’the good’’ and his mother ‘’the bad’’ so he’s projecting all of his anger and self-hatred on her part of himself to keep his part safe from harm. Safe from his mother who he fears and who’s filled with all those evil thoughts and wishes. That’s exactly why when it comes to murder, Norman ‘’the delicate flower’’ would never be capable of a such cruel act. Obviously, it’s his mother ‘’the shit people’’ who’s known for destroying everything around her who’s responsible. These two personalities are so opposites of each other that they need their own distinct voices and clothing to represent them. Therefore, he imitates his mother’s voice when it’s her turn to speak and dresses up as her when killing someone.

Another thing I want to say is that I agree with Kelly’s point concerning how Norman never went beyond the paranoid-schizoid position because he didn’t have ‘’the ability to sustain the depressive position’’ (p.95). You see, in order to enter this state of mind, one must be able to believe in the coexistence of both good and bad. Unfortunately, I think Norman could only see good or bad. That’s why after being trapped in this position for ten years, he completely lost himself and ‘’The other half has taken over, probably for all time’’ as the ‘’expert’’ in the movie explained. Which connects to Klein’s theory because she also said ‘’The shit people will overwhelm and bury the delicate flowers.’’ (p.96)

Julian Nemeth

16/9/2018 03:47:55 pm

Good post, Taina. Nice employment of Kleinian concepts. I do think this response would have been more effective with further engagement with earlier posts, particularly Angele and Larissa who deal with the same theme. Also make sure to differentiate between the author's of the book, Mitchell and Black, and Klein herself. Overall, nice job. ✓

Julia Bifulco

9/9/2018 04:43:31 pm

[Question Three]

Norman Bates was terrified of his relationship with his mother, as well as his sentiments towards her. Although she was abusive, given what I’ve learned from Freud’s lectures on child sexuality in relation to their parents, it seems as though Norman felt some sort of attraction towards his mother and didn’t know how to deal with it. He knew, as anyone with common sense would, that it was wrong to feel anything of that sort about his mother, and therefore tried to repress those feelings. As is shown in Freud’s second lecture with the example of the disturbance in the lecture hall, that which is repressed is destined to return stronger and “interfere […] more than before” (10). By pushing his true feelings down, when they returned, they did so violently and passionately, which is made clear by the murder of Mrs. Bates and her lover. Norman didn’t know what to do with his sentiments and therefore hastily got rid of them in the most effective way he could think of—no more mother, no more incestuous desires.
Another psychoanalytic interpretation of Norman’s feelings for his mother can relate to Tyson’s description of the oedipal complex (“a dysfunctional bond with a parent of the opposite sex that we don’t outgrow in adulthood”, Psychoanalytic Criticism [17]). Norman wanted to be the number one man in his mother’s life, and he was jealous of any other male figure that threatened his position. This could also be an explanation for the murder of his mother’s lover; Mrs. Bates was giving more affection to him than she was to Norman, and he couldn’t deal with that. If his mother had lived on and found men to love other than Norman, he would have forever been in competition with them. He either had to stop that from happening, and therefore killed her as well, or did it purely out of rage. Either way, it is clear that what he felt for his mother was tearing him up.

Julian Nemeth

16/9/2018 03:52:05 pm

This is a solid response that addresses Norman's incestuous desires, which are foregrounded in the film. I especially liked this line: "no more mother, no more incestuous desires." For Freud, these desires are in fact, normal during childhood; it is only when they are not outgrown during the Oedipal stage of development that problems develop in later life. This post would have been even more effective with engagement with any of the many posts upthread that also touch on Norman's relationship with mother. Overall, though, solid work. ✓

Patricia Brassard

9/9/2018 06:01:22 pm

First of all I agree with what Melanie Klein theorized about envy so I wanted to bounce off of that to analyze Norman Bates. Envy is the angry feeling that someone possesses something that is desirable to us and it creates a desire to destroy it. Melanie Klein devoted her studies to infants, however it is still relevant in Norman’s case because as Vanessa said, Norman acts very child-like due to his abuse.
Norman suffered from excessive envy which Klein attributed to an ‘’unusually strong inborn agressive drive’’ caused by inconsistent parenting, where ‘’hope of responsiveness and love is perpetually stimulated but most often cruelly disappointed (p.100)’’, much like the parenting Norman received as a child. Envy being the most destructive state of mind, it explains a lot of Norman’s reaction. In a fit on envy, Norman will poison his mother and her lover.
In some way, he was craving the ‘’good breast’’ and since envy is ‘’a reaction not to frustration or pain, but to gratification and pleasure’’ he attacked the good breast. But as we know, in the depressive position, the child realizes the good and bad come from the same source and therefore he kills the good and he also kills the bad. The confusion and despair felt when Norman attacks the ‘’good breast’’ leaves him broken. He was so lost without his mother that he had to recreate her. This unhealthy reaction is not to be confused with reparations. He does not embody his mother out of guilt. He embodies her out of the desire to recreate the good breast and out of fear he destroyed the good and the bad of the world (see depressive position), which he did.

Patricia Brassard

9/9/2018 06:02:50 pm

The second quotation comes from page 100 as well.

Julian Nemeth

16/9/2018 03:57:51 pm

Very interesting response, Patricia. I like your analysis of the role of envy in Norman's behavior, which I think you could push even further. Does it also help us explain his behavior towards Marion? Furthermore, this far down thread, you also want to explicitly engage with earlier posts. For instance, a number of other commenters did see the resurrection of mother as an attempt at reparations (which does tend to follow after guilt in the depressive position). You should mention them by name and then explain your disagreement. All that said, this is still good work. Looking forward to reading more of your posts in the near future. ✓

LéAnne Dansereau

9/9/2018 06:12:26 pm

(Question #3)
Like David mentioned in his response, the psychoanalyst barely mentions the reasons behind Norman’s first crime the murder of his mother. In the movie’s dialogue, the psychoanalyst described the cause as “that pushed him over the line and he killed them both his mother and her lover” (Psycho), the word ‘that’ referring to the jealousy he felt over the fact his mother was it seemed to him replacing him by that man she fell in love with, therefore creating a feeling of abandonment. I noticed that the psychoanalyst never once refers to the father’s death other than to explain the very disturbed state of mind that Norman finds himself in. Couldn’t the death of Norman’s father be a reason for him killing his own mother? Couldn’t that traumatizing event push Norman to “take the place” of his father in his mother’s life, therefore “becoming” him in a way? If Norman never got over the fact that his father had passed away, it could have been that his mother was in fact replacing his father’s presence by another man’s, and not himself, that pushed him to murder them both. I feel like blaming Norman’s first crime solely on jealousy his mother giving more importance to her lover than to him (or a different kind of importance, one a lover deserves but not a son) would be ignoring completely the fact that the disappearance of the father figure in Norman’s life could have created a void. That void, he felt his mother was filling with the presence of a man he did not want in his life, because he could never be his father.
Moreover, the psychoanalyst mentions a conflict within Norman’s psyche, a conflict that could be associated with Freud’s concepts of ego and super-ego. In this case, the ego could be Norman’s portion of the mind, interacting with the external world and taking in the pressure from both that world and the super-ego. Accordingly, the mother’s portion of the mind would be the super-ego judgemental, restrictive and pitiless. It controlled the ego, thus Norman’s mind, and would pressure him, even make him act a certain way. Which brings me to my second point. The psychoanalyst mentions that he was never fully himself and that now that he got arrested, the conflict between his mother and himself is finally over the dominant personality has won and the mother fully took over. It would possible to assume that by Norman’s behavior, which has been overgrown by his mother’s (her voice, the habits of an old woman, the way she expresses herself, her body language, etc.) Although, on that point, I disagree with the psychoanalyst, because it would be stating that the super-ego fully took over the ego, a thing I do not believe to be possible. The psychoanalyst cannot assure that Norman’s presence has vanished from his body, that he has no impact on his actions and his thoughts anymore. Even though the super-ego is very powerful and can develop an important hold on the ego, nothing in the film proves that the super-ego completely absorbed the ego to a point where it is simply inexistent. In my opinion, there is a possibility Norman’s part of the psyche still exists and that he could resurface anytime.

LéAnne Dansereau

9/9/2018 06:17:20 pm

Long spaces are in fact dashes. I only noticed after posting the response that the symbols didn't appear, leaving long blank spots.

Julian Nemeth

16/9/2018 04:01:55 pm

Very good response, Leanne. I like how you built off David's post to take your analysis in your own direction. I think this would have been even more effective if you offered more of the reasons behind your claim that Norman may possibly resurface. This argument seems plausible to me, but you'd want to provide more evidence of why you think this may be the case. I also think the post would be more effective with at least one quotation from the Freud text. Overall, though, interesting work. Nice job. ✓

Isabella Martino

9/9/2018 06:57:46 pm

2) It is undoubtedly certain that Norman Bates felt a deep connection towards his mother. What was unexpected however, was the great lengths he went to in order to murder his mother and keep it a secret for years. As Klein stated, one who feels “intense terror and guilt generated by the damage done to [one’s] loved objects by her own destructiveness” (95), is in the depressive position. When Bates discovered that his mother was involved with a man other than himself, he could not cope with the pain that appeared. He began to view his mother not only as someone who could bring him immense amounts of love and happiness, but as the person who could inflict pain and sadness onto him. In other words, Norman was beginning to exit the paranoid-schizoid position he was currently in as he found himself to be associating his mother with both the ‘good’ and the ‘bad’. Bates’ realization that his mother was not wholly good sparked a fuel of anger deep inside of him, thus causing him to murder her. Nevertheless, I believe he did not commit the heinous crime effortlessly, as it is evident Norman is left with immense feelings of guilt. The split personality of Norman’s mother that lives inside his head is primal evidence of this. Klein explains that people – much like Norman throughout the film – generate reparative fantasies, “in a desperate effort to heal the damage” (95). It is believed that the mother’s personality is so present inside Norman’s mind that he, along with all the other characters in the movie, believe it is at fault for his crimes. I am convinced that this is Norman’s way of trying to justify his actions to himself. His mother’s personality is a reparative fantasy he has created in order to try to “balance and compensate for [his] destructiveness” (95). We see this especially towards the end of the film when Bates’ is in the jail cell. In the scene, Norman’s mother’s voice explains “he was always bad, and in the end he intended to tell them I killed those girls, and that man”. By putting the blame on her, Norman was trying to escape the harsh reality of his own crimes, as well as try to catch a glimpse of the ‘good’ he destroyed.

I was intrigued with what Emily said in regards to Norman killing Marion along with the other two women. I do agree that he most probably killed them as a means to cope with his feelings towards them. This being said, I feel as though the reasoning behind his actions is due to his repressed fear of experiencing what his mother put him through. As I stated earlier, Norman was immensely hurt when his mother started seeing another man. His pain was so prominent in his mind that it caused him to murder his own mother. Due to this event, I believe Norman is afraid any woman he develops feelings for will choose another man over him. It is due to this unconscious dread that pushes him to commit these murders. He has convinced himself every woman he has feelings for contains both ‘good’ and ‘bad’ – because as I mentioned earlier he is in the depressive position – and so he kills them as a means to destroy the evil. Sadly however, by slaughtering these women to eliminate their ‘bad’ potential to hurt him, Norman also destroys their ‘good’ which was their innocence and kindness.

Julian Nemeth

16/9/2018 04:05:23 pm

This is a very good post, Isabelle. I especially like your second paragraph where you engage with Emily's response and elaborate on your ideas about the depressive position and Norman's murderous rage towards women. I do think that the first part of the post would be even stronger with a clearer sense of how Norman went into the paranoid schizoid position. Overall, however, nice work.

Doha Ani

9/9/2018 07:18:57 pm

Question 3
After watching the movie Psycho I believe that Norman Bate is a simple yet complex character. To me his simple side was well explained by the psychiatric when he said that Norman’s personality was divided between his own and his mother’s who was the strongest one of the two. Indeed, Norman’s split personality took roots from the death of his father which caused him a great trauma since then his life was forever changed because he was left alone with his mother for many years so we could infer that since then their relationship began to take a new turn so when his mom got remarried he never accepted that fact because he felt that his place was taken by a stranger and that his mom’s love and care was taken away from him which awakened his jealousy so he killed the both them but soon after he regretted his mom because he never intended to kill her, he only wanted to get rid of his almost rival so that’s why he decided to bring her back to his side by impersonating her. Also, I personally think that the part where Bates personality gets more complex is when we could understand that Bates already had some sort of issues that the psychiatric failed to explain because when Marion told his to put his mom into a mental health institute he gave her a rather dark but true description of the place by telling her that people were badly treated there and that you were looked upon meanly as if he already went there which is realistic in the sense that Bates shows some signs of mental issues for example I agree the comment of Vanessa about the fact that it almost feels like he didn’t grow up because he talks and acts as if he wasn’t an adult and the fact that he still depends on his mom although he is the one taking care of her. In the end, I think that although Bates had the passion motive to kill his mother and her husband I think that he was predisposed to do so because he already had mental issues that were caused by the death of father.

Julian Nemeth

16/9/2018 04:08:57 pm

Doha,

There are some nice points in this response. You argument about the trauma of Norman's father's death and his realistic concerns about mental institutions are well-made. That said, this post would be much more effective with a deeper engagement with earlier posts that treated the same subject (particularly Norman's father) and also provided actual citations to the text as required in the instructions. Overall, this shows promise, but I know you can go even deeper into the material. Looking forward to reading more. ✓-

Sophie-Leprohon Watters

9/9/2018 08:14:20 pm

(Question 1)
Victoria explores the how the element of guilt is connected to the superego (Norma). I’d like to add that there’s also an element of revenge. Norman felt abandoned by his mother for the first time when she got engaged. To prevent her from leaving him, he killed her so she could stay with him. This created a form of resentment in the superego, Norma was placing guilt in Norman (the ego) when he felt attraction towards Marion. He couldn’t possibly have spent time planning a murder-suicide cover for his mother’s death only to leave her for another woman. The superego wasn’t going to let him do this, so she took the situation in her own hands and killed Marion as a punishment to Norman. There’s also a power struggle between Norman and his mother. He’s very passive towards her since the superego is stronger than the ego, he says, ‘’Sometimes, when she talks to me like that, I feel I’d like to go up there and curse her and leave her forever.’’ Throughout the movie, he tries to appease her. He disposes of the cars and the bodies in the id (which is not only the cellar, but everything below surface level). After feeling guilty and abused, he reaches his breaking point when he carries her down to the id as well. ‘’For after a certain number of months the whole moral fuss is over, the criticism of the superego is silent, the ego is rehabilitated and again enjoys all the rights of man till the next attack... it celebrates a triumph, as though the super-ego had lost all its strength or had melted into the ego; and this liberated, manic ego permits itself a truly uninhibited satisfaction of all its appetites.’’ (page 60). The viewer understands that he did this against her will to protect her from the police, but it was also the source of his revenge. He was finally able to punish her for everything she had done to him; the abandonment, the abuse, and killing Marion. For a short period of time, the ego was able to overpower the superego by repressing it into the id.

Sophie-Leprohon Watters

9/9/2018 08:16:56 pm

*Victoria explores how the element of guilt is connected to tge superego (Norma).

Julian Nemeth

16/9/2018 04:15:10 pm

There are some nice points here, Sophie. I'm especially happy to see you make the connection between the Id and not only the cellar, but the pond and the earth where the bodies are buried. This post would have been even more effective with a bit more clarity on which "mother" you were referencing (the real mother vs. the mother of Norman's mind). Overall, though, solid work. ✓

Chris Morgan Arseneau

9/9/2018 08:35:30 pm

Forum 1 – Humanities (Question #3: Alternative)
A Psychoanalytic “Case Study” of the Character of Norman Bates

There may very well be a question of castration anxiety in Psycho. According to Freud, “Castration anxiety is thus best understood as fear of demotion to the powerless position occupied by females.” (Psychoanalytic Criticism, Page 26). This phenomenon can be related to Norman, more specifically to how his mind is dominated by his mother’s personality. Norman appears to try and escape castration anxiety through voyeuristic tendencies. For example, he removes a painting so that he can watch Marion undress through a hole in the wall. The sexual pleasure he gains from watching a naked woman undoubtedly gives him a sense of power or manliness.

Oedipal fixation is evident throughout the movie Psycho. Norman never truly detached himself from his mother or identified himself with a father figure. He never repressed his sexual desire or impulses towards Mrs. Bates, which prevented him from developing a ‘normal’ personality.

When Mrs. Bates started giving more importance to her new lover than to her son, Norman’s possessive and envious love for her drove him to kill the object of his affection and her new lover. He represses the memory of murdering his mother in order to try to alleviate the guilt he feels. He tries to repress what he’s done in his own mind, but the guilt is so immense that he develops a split personality. I believe he tries to use denial as a defense mechanism. He pretends that his mother is still alive, or at least tries to fool himself into believing she’s still alive. He even tries to make this delusion more believable and physical by stealing his mother’s dead body and using his taxidermy skills to preserve it for as long as he can. His mother lives on in his mind as a type of maternal super ego and becomes the dominating personality.

It’s important to note that when Norman kills young women he’s attracted to, part of him seems to want his mother’s personality to be as jealous as he was of her new lover and kill them as he killed her and her lover.

Julian Nemeth

16/9/2018 04:19:18 pm

Chris,

Let me say that the first part of your post is awesome. You made a link to castration anxiety that makes a lot of sense and connects to something, Norman's voyeuristic tendencies, that had so far been entirely ignored in the forum. Given the way you start your post, it sounded like you would continue with this argument for the rest of the response, but then you move onto other issues, necessarily superficially, in your other two paragraphs. I urge you to choose one big topic (such as castration anxiety, which arguably could also be linked to Norman's murderous behavior towards women) and then go deep into it in your response. Finally, also make sure to expand the conversation by referencing your peer's work to show how you are connecting to what they are writing or challenging it. Overall, solid work, that shows serious potential. ✓-

Bridget Griffin

9/9/2018 09:19:16 pm

I found the fact that Idia and Meghan chose to analyze Marion as opposed to Norman interesting, but I disagree with the fact that she saw stealing the money and fleeing as running away from her problems; she thought she could fix them. She isn’t mindlessly running away, she drives specifically to Fairvale, where her boyfriend lives. She wants to use the money to repay his debts so they can afford to get married, thus fulfilling the wishes of her id, which wants to be with Fred, and her super-ego, which sees the unwed couple as immoral.
Marion feels incredibly guilty about secretly meeting with Sam in a hotel room, vocalizing her wishes to have him visit her respectably, even mentioning her mother’s portrait being present. She wants a relationship that she feels her mother would respect, a character that is never literally present in the film, but may be present in Marion’s super-ego. The mother can even be seen in a portrait in Marion’s house, looking over her as she makes the decision to steal the money. Her super-ego is very present throughout her time on screen, often hearing voices of other people judging her or worrying about her as she drives off with the money. Despite the fact that she’s trying to repair her immoral ways, using more immoral means to achieve a moral end causes her super-ego to scorn her two times over, and her ego can never rest.
From the perspective of camera angles, license plates are often shown close-up, and it almost feels like they could represent personality. Ridden by guilt upon stealing the money, Marion attempts to cleanse herself by switching cars. Not only does she think this will make her more difficult to trace, she finds that it will grant her with a new, guilt-free personality. This doesn’t work, however, and when she arrives at the Bates Motel, she realizes in her conversation with Norman that she could never truly be happy living off of stolen money. In stealing the money, she had unintentionally set her own “private trap”, and as Freud says on page 73 of The Dissection of Psychical Personality, “Wishful impulses which have never passed beyond the id, but impressions, too, which have been sunk into the id by repression, are virtually immortal; after the passage of decades they behave as though they had just occurred.” No matter how much she tries to oppress the fact that she stole the money, the id is immortal, and she will always live with that burden. In this realization, she decides to return home, and attempts to cleanse herself of the guilt again by showering, hoping to emerge a new person. Of course, she never does emerge from that shower alive, and the money remains repressed, hidden in that newspaper in the trunk of her submerged car.

Bridget Griffin

9/9/2018 09:20:50 pm

Sorry, this was in response to question 1.

Julian Nemeth

16/9/2018 04:26:10 pm

Bridget,

This is a great response. You are one of the few who has chosen to dissect Marion's personality, which I find as interesting as Norman's, and I'm happy to see it. Your point about the superego is excellent. Indeed, besides the voices in her head, the police officer himself, is a clear visual indicator of the superego's overwhelming presence. I do think there are a few points that could have been clearer here. I'm not sure who "Fred" is and the quote about the timelessness of repressed wishes don't really apply to Marion because, in this case, her desires did pass through the Id into consciousness. Overall, however, I was really happy to see your sharp and original observations, and also your close attention to filmic elements. Nice job. ✓+

Avraham Cymbalist

9/9/2018 09:36:19 pm

Norman Bates fits into Klein's ideology about the progression of mental states that begins as early as birth. Norman was traumatized from early childhood, his father abandoned him at an early age and his mother was a very demanding and abrasive woman. When Norman is growing up, after his father is gone, he becomes incredibly attached to a destructive relationship with his mother. We can speculate that Norman was always trying to receive his mother’s approval and ultimately her affection. This made the young boy very emotionally unstable and his instability expanded as he grew older. At a certain point in Norman’s life, his sanity was put to the test. A stranger waltzed into his house and received Mrs. Bates love almost instantly, this was something that Norman had been trying to get for his whole life. Norman then got incredibly jealous but since he was unable to associate his mother with anything negative, he decided to kill her in an attempt to keep what Klein describes as the “good breast” and the “bad breast” separate (Mitchell and Black 92). Another possible cause of Norman’s paranoid-schizoid position is that he is trying to defend himself against the “persecutory anxieties generated by the death instinct” (93). Norman is so distraught that his mother can give her love to a stranger and not him when he has been after it his whole life. This blow definitely caused Norman to reflect on his own life and that’s when his death drive suggested the option of suicide. This thought was immediately repulsed by Norman and to fight these thoughts he either developed or instensly strengthened his paranoid-schizoid position.

Avraham Cymbalist

9/9/2018 11:01:58 pm

Question 2

Julian Nemeth

16/9/2018 04:29:53 pm

This is a solid post, but I would just want to see a bit more definition and application of Klein's concepts. Perhaps more importantly, many other students engaged with these exact issues up thread, and you would want to show how you are advancing the conversation. Looking forward to reading more of your work. ✓-

Wendy Lopez

9/9/2018 10:15:31 pm

Question 2

As previously mentioned by Angel, towards the end of the film, when Norman is imprisoned, we can see that his good side has parted from him. There’s the connection to be made with Klein’s concept of the “good and the “bad” within one’s self when talking about Rachel’s images, in the lecture on the Kleinian theory. “It was as if she had two very different kinds of experiences, and they had virtually nothing to do with each other” (p.89). This passage allows us to understand that we are represented in two ways that are entirely opposite, for Norman his true self was the “good” filled with innocence and care, as for the “bad” was his mother that he embodied in himself. In Klein’s writing on the paranoid-schizoid, she mentions that if both sides were to merge, the bad would inevitably overpower the good, which is exactly what we come to see in the final scene. When the camera comes up close too Norman when he is sited alone, we hear this voice in his head, which is his mother’s. This is a clear sign that by trying to keep the memory of his mother by talking, thinking, acting and dressing like her, to avoid his guilt, he instead lost himself. “(…) an integration would result in the destruction of the delicate, vulnerable flowers; they would be submerged and buried forever under the massive, ominous shit people” (p.89).

Julian Nemeth

16/9/2018 04:32:01 pm

This is a solid post, Wendy. I do think just a bit more expansion on the core concept of splitting and of examples from the film (and engagement with additional posts making use of Klein) would make this even more effective. Overall, a solid start. ✓-

chloe casarotto

9/9/2018 11:12:03 pm

Question 1:
During the movie Psycho, we are introduced to Norman Bates and his mother Mrs. Bates who own a small motel on the side of the old highway. Right away, Norman is a man who seems to be strange and this can be seen through Marion Crane’s expressions during their first conversations. As the audience becomes familiar with Norman we realise that he is unable to retain his thoughts and voices everything he thinks. As he and Marion eat sandwiches, Marion suggests he put his troubled mother in a home that can take care of her properly and he becomes quickly offended as he expresses his belief that everyone goes mad and that no one should be put into an institution or as he calls them “mad houses”. This shows that he is impulsive because of how quickly he reacts to his guest’s comment, by doing such he is revealing one of Sigmund Freud’s beliefs about it ego, although in this case, the ego is broken. The ego, is a filter for the soul and makes the superego and id compatible as they are opposing forces. The reason behind the ego being different than the id and superego is that “the ego can be split; it splits itself during a number of its functions—temporarily at least. Its parts can come together again afterwards.” (Freud 57) while the id and the superego are incapable of doing such because they are forces that are natural and engraved in our minds. During this scene we learn that the ego has split and has not been able to mold back together, this means that his id and his superego are at war with each other. When he had unleashed a small fit of anger towards Marion, it is because his id was controlling his mind and Norman’s ego was not present. His id is protecting what he knows and loves, it is present because his feelings are top priority as well as his personal well being because he explains he cannot function without his mother beside him. If his ego was intact, he would not have snapped at the young girl because society taught him not to yell at strangers and he would have reacted calmly and rationally as society says we should. His superego is dormant and only wakes once when he offers Marion a sandwich.

Julian Nemeth

16/9/2018 04:38:28 pm

There are some interesting points here, Chloe. I would just add that it's important to note that Freud did not see the id and superego as "natural" when compared with the ego; they were just different agencies of the mind. It's also important to note that Freud saw each agency as "blending" into one another rather than being strictly separated. Perhaps you could emphasize this is one of Norman's key issues (as noted upthread). Finally, though I liked that you chose to focus on one particular scene, I was surprised that the dinner scene conversation was used to discuss the superego issue, without any mention of mother, who seems like a much clearer superego representative (also as discussed upthread). Finally, in future posts, make sure to explicitly reference earlier responses, to show how you are advancing the conversation. Looking forward to watching your work develop. ✓-

Maria Fatima Agustin

9/9/2018 11:14:34 pm

Question #3

The movie Psycho begins with a scene showing Marion and Sam’s relationship. It was clear that those lovely characters were madly in love with each other. However, early in the movie they mention that they can’t get married nor live together. Personally, I believe that the main reason as to why they can’t have a “happily ever after” is Sam Loomis. In fact, he mentions in the movie that he can’t possibly provide for the both of them for he has money problems and the fact that he has to pay for his ex-wife’s alimonies does not help his miserable situation. It was evident that Marion had her own job, though. Therefore, if they both really loved each other, they would find a way to be together. For instance, Marion could contribute a fair amount of money for their home. Then, why was that not an option for Sam?

Even with the “money issues” argument, I believe that the idea of masculinity during that time played a big role on his decision. During that period, it was important for the man to be able to provide for his wife and family. As for Sam Loomis who met most of the criteria that made a man of those days a “Man” (for example, he was a straight handsome man who owns his own hardware store), that wasn’t really the case. He would be ashamed and embarrassed of his incapacity, as a man, to give the woman he loves what he thinks she deserves. In my point of view, he considered his reputation to be superior to his relationship with Marion.

That point leads me to what we read on the text “Psychoanalytic criticism”. On page 17, it was written: “My unconscious knowledge of the reason why is what makes me anxious. In this way, anxiety always involves the return of the repressed: I am anxious because something I repressed− some painful or frightening or guilty experience− is resurfacing and I want to keep it repressed.” To link that excerpt of text to Sam’s situation, it is important to mention that he always lived in a patriarchal society. Therefore, he becomes anxious when he thinks about his inability to provide for Marion (a fact he represses). He represses that thought because when he was younger, he was probably surrounded by men making the decisions for the families… men in his life always played the role of the “super hero”, which makes him believe that he should follow those footsteps. That is possibly why he declines the idea of marrying Marion without consciously really knowing why. Another possible guilty experience that he represses would be about his ex-wife. It was probable that the reason as to why they got a divorce was because of his incapacity to, again, provide for her due to the amount of debts he had. Therefore, whenever the thought of him marrying another woman comes up, he becomes anxious because he doesn’t want to repeat the same journey again or simply because he represses the idea that makes him feel very guilty: not being able to supply the life of his significant other with more than just love.

Julian Nemeth

16/9/2018 04:44:16 pm

I love the fact that you focused on Sam and masculinity, Maria! Please continue this line of analysis in future posts. I do think this would have been just a little more effective with more attention to patriarchy and money in the film: arguably, Cassidy is just a much more extreme version of what you describe in Sam. You might have also speculated on what would have happened if Marion was "successful" in bringing the money to Sam: he very well may have turned away as much because of castration anxiety than out of concern over criminality. Overall, though, very nice job. ✓

Ben Carson

9/9/2018 11:37:42 pm

Q2-

Norman Bates is an almost perfect human representation of Melanie Klein’s theories described in her work titled “Melanie Klein and Contemporary Kleinian Theory”. The big difference between Norman and Melanie’s theories is that Norman is not an infant, although he does have many childish traits. Up until the appearance of his mother’s lover in their lives, Norman describes him and his mother as being virtually inseparable, as the relationship between a mother and baby. The minute we see Norman it becomes apparent that he is very childish. He has many mannerisms of a child, such as getting flustered and losing his words when he becomes uncomfortable. In “Melanie Klein and Contemporary Kleinian Theory”, Klein wrote “The state of the infant following a fantasy of rageful destruction toward the frustrating mother as one of deep remorse. The frustrating whole object who has been destroyed is also the loved object toward whom the child feels deep gratitude and concern. Out of that love and concern, reparative fantasies are generated, in a desperate effort to heal the damage, to make the mother whole once again.” (p. 95) In Norman’s case, the fantasies Klein refers to are made a reality. Norman’s fantasy of “rageful destruction” is realized as the murder of his mother and her lover. Norman like his mother’s lover has replaced him, and therefore is incredibly jealous of their relationship. Norman’s reparations to the damage he has done are quite a literal depiction of what Klein describes. According to Klein, an infant’s reparative fantasies are generated with the intention of healing the damage they have done. Trying to undo his wrongdoings, Norman pretends that the corpse of his mother is in fact his real mother to the point that he interacts with her inside his brain. She becomes the cruel and controlling superego inside his mind. Norman many recreates his mother because he misses the good and loving side to her. As Vanessa perfectly sums it up in her essay “He created a fictitious version of her to “make her whole again”. This allowed him to feel less remorse regarding his mom and to preserve the goodness in her”.

Julian Nemeth

16/9/2018 04:45:52 pm

Good work, Ben. ✓

Kathleen Fabella

10/9/2018 12:50:29 am

Question 3 (Psychoanalytic Study)

Although we may think that Norman was the only character in the movie Psycho who we can really analyze psychoanalytically, I believe that we can also do so with Marion. First and foremost, I completely agree with Meghan when she says that Marion lived a dull life and was tired of it. She worked for her boss for 10 years and wasn’t satisfied with her relationship with Sam who can’t marry her because of his financial issues. It was clear to see that she was unhappy. “Can’t buy off unhappiness with pills”, she says. Until her boss asks her to go the bank to bring the 40 000$. And once being presented with this, her impulses shift and so does her desires. As she plans on taking the money for herself and running away, you can tell that Marion was very unsure about it. She looks at herself in the mirror but stares away as soon as possible as if she was ashamed, she glances at her parents’ picture posted on her wall as if she thinks they are watching her, Marion sits on her bed for a while with a blank stare or when she drives frantically out of the city into the country. This behavior could be in relation to what we talked about in the lecture of Dissection of Personality. Her id made her go out of control and not think straight once handed with the money. “We approach the id with analogies: we call it chaos, a cauldron full of seething excitations” (page 72). Her id made her think of all the possibilities she could use it for, influencing her to run away so suddenly. When on the other hand, her ego was probably “facepalming” the whole way through. How Freud mentions that our ego brings both desires and morals of our society together. But in Marion’s case, her id had way more control in her actions but her ego had more control mentally, which explained why she was always so nervous of getting caught or how she tells herself off to anyone she encounters on the way (for example when she asks “does it look like something is wrong”). There isn’t a balance between her id and ego. One is always more dominant than the other, making her impulsive by making wrong decisions or by thinking what is only good for herself and not thinking of how society will see it.

It’s kind of as if reality hits Marion and she realizes that she needs to find a new life, a new beginning (which is the id talking). So she drives away as far as possible thinking that what was in the past stays in the past. Presumably, she wanted to repress that life she once had and find a new and more exciting one, to repress that feeling of unhappiness or dullness she had to live with. “To a private island like you?”, asks Norman to Marion. She followed her desires and neglected the realistically based part of her judgements. But what I do wonder is where is the super ego in all of this?

Julian Nemeth

16/9/2018 04:49:07 pm

Solid response, Kathleen. I would just add that I was surprised that you did not mention the superego in your response, which her mother's picture, the voices in her head in the car, and the police officer so clearly embodied. It's also worth noting that she was driving to meet Sam with the money. Overall, this shows a lot of promise. Looking forward to watching your work develop. ✓-

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