Norman Bates, from Psycho and Bates Motel, ranks highly as one of the most iconic characters in film and television of all time, but the character’s psychology - and what’s actually wrong with him - has been a hot topic of discussion for decades.
Originally created by Robert Bloch in his 1959 novel, Psycho, Norman Bates is a mild-mannered, well-spoken young man who runs a roadside motel who has an abusive relationship with his own mother, with whom he can frequently be heard having intense arguments with about numerous situations. Alfred Hitchcock adapted Bloch’s novel for his 1960 film, Psycho, which became known as not only one of Hitchcock’s most well-received films, but has been credited with starting the slasher sub-genre of horror. Bates’ split personality, “Mother”, has been debated as to whom, exactly, is the killer: Norman or Norma? In Bloch’s novel, once Norman’s mind completely fractures, effectively causing him to be completely taken over by “Mother”, she insists that she had to take control, as Norman was the dangerous one.
Bates Motel was a prequel to Bloch’s novel and Hitchcock’s movie which took a modern spin on the tale and put Freddie Highmore as the role of a younger Norman Bates, but he was no more sane than the other versions. The series ran on A&E from 2013 to 2017, spanning five seasons in total. The series also starred Vera Farmiga (The Conjuring franchise) as Norma Bates, and allowed viewers to see the relationship between Norma and her son before she perished and he began acting as both of them.
Norman Bates’ Mental Illness Explained
Common parlance suggests that Norman Bates suffers from dissociative identity disorder (DID), which was previously known as “multiple personality disorder”. This diagnosis is one of the most fascinating - and compelling - psychological diagnoses because of shock value alone. It has been used not only in films like Psycho or series like Bates Motel, but more recently in the second movie in M. Night Shyamalan’s Eastrail 177 trilogy, Split. The character of Kevin Wendell Crumb (James McAvoy) was afflicted with 23 different personalities, and ended up with a 24th by the film’s conclusion. It was also shown that Crumb was able to develop physiological changes - enhanced strength and speed, among other things - because of this 24th personality, which was known as “The Beast”.
Shyamalan was inspired for the character of Kevin Crumb from a book written by Daniel Keys, The Minds of Billy Milligan, which was about a real person with DID who was the first in U.S. history to go on trial and claim insanity due to an alternate personality supposedly committing the crime. This seems to be directly taken from Norman Bates’ playbook, as the character in Bates Motel is often played as sympathetic; he’s a loner, an outcast, his mother adores him (but berates him), and finally, he snaps. In the book, Bloch digs into this deeper by suggesting that Norma was emotionally abusive to Norman and told him that sexual acts were sinful and all other women were impure. This is a common theme throughout various adaptations, but Norma’s character in Bates Motel came across as a concerned, overprotective helicopter parent - possibly due to Norman’s younger age - than a religious zealot, like Margaret White in Carrie.
A hallmark of DID is emotional abuse or trauma that causes the mind to develop “alternates” for various methods of coping, protection, or to allow the person to escape their abuse; this is often where amnesia occurs. Other sources have suggested that it was Norma and Norman’s close bond - which was entirely co-dependent, though took on an implied, darker level in the novels - which caused Norman to fracture after her death; from there, he created his “Mother” as a separate personality because he couldn’t stand to be without her. It’s a gray area as to whether her death triggered his psychotic break. Norman murdered his mother out of jealousy, but was shown in Bates Motel to experience symptoms before. A character as nuanced as Norman Bates can’t be written off with such a singular pathway, but it shows just how interesting characters can be when they’re steeped in truth that’s sometimes stranger than fiction.
Next: Psycho’s Iconic Twist Ending (& What It Really Means)
