Psycho without a Cause: Norman Bates and Juvenile Delinquency Cinema

Hitchcock’s films abound with “dangerous children” masquerading as adults. Chief Inspector Oxford, in Frenzy, observes, “On the surface, in conversation, they appear as ordinary, likeable adult fellows. But emotionally, they remain as dangerous children, whose conduct may revert to a primitive, subhuman level at any moment.” Although no children appear in Psycho (1960), the dynamics of childhood and adolescence nevertheless play out across the screen in the arrested development of Norman Bates and his relationship to “Mother,” as well as the film’s use of juvenile delinquent cinema tropes to establish Norman as a dangerous youth. Robin Wood notes, “The whole film is interwoven with … parent/child references.”1 Furthermore, the film wears its Freudian psychology writ large on its proverbial sleeve. Even in attempts to move away from Freudian analysis, such as Anna Powell’s Deluezean read of the film, one cannot escape the filmmaker’s Freudian intent: “Norman’s substantial Oedipus complex and his sadistic voyeurism … are clearly signaled.”2 Norman’s arrested development and his dynamic with Mother demonstrate a child gone horribly wrong.