Portrayals of Mental Illness in Classic Film: Anthony Perkins in "Psycho" (1960)

There would be no point in describing the legendary film itself, but Norman Bates is a fascinating character that could fill a whole article all on his own. Experiencing his father's death at an early age and being told that women and sex were sinful, somehow Norman was met with jealousy when Norma started to take a lover. Jealous, he killed both of them, but it is not known in this film how he developed multiple personality disorder, although having had suffered it before stealing his mother's body.

"DID [or Multiple Personality Disorder] is usually caused during childhood because of trauma that will prevent a central consciousness to form in order to help the protect the child they believe that the traumatic events happened to someone else. DID can be seen as a sort of coping mechanism. The psychiatrist speculates that Bates' could not deal with having committed matricide, and therefore Bates keeps his mother alive by "giving her half of his life" ("Disassociative Identity Disorder in Psycho")

Anthony Perkins may not have had the disease, but he had plenty experience. An only child of Janet Esselstyn and actor Osgood Perkins ("Scarface," "Gold Diggers of 1937"), Perkins experienced a plethora of negative experiences with both parents. With the absence of his father working both on stage and screen he "became abnormally close to my mother and whenever my father came home I was jealous. It was the Oedipal thing in a pronounced form, I loved him but I also wanted him to be dead so I could have her all to myself."

And like Norman Bates, a 5 year old Perkins watched his father die of a heart attack. "I was mortified," Tony says, "I assumed that my wanting him to be dead had actually killed him. A weight of guilt settled down on the boy's life. "I prayed and prayed for my father to come back. I remember long nights of crying in bed. For years I nursed the hope that he wasn't really dead. Because I'd see him on film, it was as if he were still alive. He became a mythic being to me, to be dreaded and appeased."

Tony's misappropriated guilt soon poisoned his life with his mother. "Because loving my mother was connected in my mind with killing my father, it became dangerous to love my mother." Unaware of what was happening in her son, Tony's mother unintentionally intensified his anguish. During her husband's lengthy absences, she had compulsively eroticized the relationship with her son,and now that her husband was dead her emotional demands on Tony escalated. "She was constantly touching me and caressing me," says Tony, explaining that her behavior continued into his adulthood. "Not realizing what effect she was having, she would touch me all over, even stroking the inside of my thighs right up to my crotch." ("Return of Psycho")



A Little Something Extra to Check Out:

Inside Psycho | Wondery