Anh Nguyen
Professor Kenneth Brady
English 100
13 October 2014
Norman Bates: Two Lives Within A Soul
Sigmund Freud's Psychoanalytic Theory of Personality Development states that there is a structural model of the psyche, which splits the human identity into three instances of Ego, Superego, and ID. In Psychoanalytic Stage of Development, there are five stages: Oral, Anal, Phallic, Latency, and Genital. Even though Sigmund Freud never was writing about the movie Psycho, theories of Freud, have a great connection with the personality of Norman Bates. According to Oedipus complex, by Sigmund Freud, it introduced the term for a child's libidinal attachment to the opposite sex parent, while experiencing jealousy and dislike of the same sex parent, as an expression of infantile sexuality. The character Norman Bates, in the movie Psycho, showed many signs of having an Oedipus complex when he murdered his mother and her lover.
In the relationship between Norman Bates and his mother, Bates's mother ruled Norman's life and controlled his actions. She can be perceived as a symbolic representation of the super-ego. Eventually, this led Norman to become the killer. Moreover, matricide is the most unbearable guilt, which is the reason of his split personalities. Norman Bates has the want to keep the illusion of his mother being alive and sacrifices his other half to her to erase the crime at least in his mind. The theories of Freud, have been found greatly appeal in connection with the analysis on how Norman Bates struggles to complete successfully the task confronted in the Phallic Stage of Super Ego. Freud's theory can be demonstrated through Norman Bates in the movie Psycho by the relationship between him and his mother, the jealousy over his mother and the want to keep the illusion of his mother being...