Freuds Concept of the Unconscious Hitchcocks Psycho

Freuds Concept of the Un certified Hitchcocks psychoIn this essay I have analysed the famous Hitchcock get hold of psycho using Freuds concept of the unconscious.The bleak, monochrome film is made more powerful by Bernard Herrmanns sparse, but driving, recognisable s pith, first played under the unbalanced credits. The criss-crossing patterns, bid mirror-images, are correlated to the split, schizophrenic personalisedity of a major protagonist. The initial usage of garbled chords immediately provides us with a hint of detachment of a character to be involved, this along with the titles created by Saul Bass, (who was known for his style reminiscent of 1920s Soviet poster art) immediately provide the interview with apprehension. The screech of the violins is representative of birds, which we after see depicted by dint ofout the film. Many of Hitchcocks recurring images are meaning(a) in Freudian dream interpretation. It is apparent right from the beginning what lies ahead is n o ordinary story, and a strange feeling of anxiety swells with the visual and musical intro. Screenwriter Joseph Stefano adapted Robert Blochs novel Psycho into what would endure matchless of Alfred Hitchcocks influential works and one of the classic films of all time. We are led to believe Psycho is a film intimately cloak-and-dagger affairs, misappropriation, murder, secrets, and mental struggle although in the darkness, there lies an examination of the temptations of wealth, informal identity, gender roles, informal expression, it depicts the appalling lawsuits which can occur with the departure of formula advancement. Psycho reiterates to its viewers that pack sometimes provide a visual falsity of who they are and stories we have read as children of a bad person visually representative of their character traits in life are not frequently the case, and when the personal development has not reached an expected level that immoral crimes may occur.Sigmund Freud wrote about the human capitulum in the 1920 essay Beyond the Pleasure Principle, and fully elaborated upon it in The Ego and the Id (1923). Freuds theory of the subconscious consists of 3 parts, the Id, the Ego, and the Super Ego and the interaction between them all. The Id is considered to be chaotic, the center for animalistic impulses, and is governed by the entertainment principle, otherwise known as instant gratification. It is also the location of the libido, which is our life force or our sexual drive. The Ids driving instinct is for egotism-preservation. The Ego is quite different from the Id, it is the broker between the Id and the Super Ego. The Ego is also the personality we show others, founded upon the reality formula. The Super Ego represents our conscience or moral standards, ideas of right and price which are permanently instilled in our minds by our parents or other authority figures. Freud regarded the mind to be like an Iceberg (see Figure 1) where the unconscious lie s below the surface, and the conscious above. To conclude the Id demands gratification, the Ego responds to reality (civilization), and the Superego which is our moral computer code and also is dictated by the demands of society.The storyline of this film involves a untried woman who through the cheer principle of the id steals $40,000 from her employer. Marion is motivated by her desire to settle down and have a family with her warmthr surface-to-air missile and to have financial freedom. Her super ego and the moral side have been outbalanced by her personal desires to raging the perfect life with her lover. She ends up on a personal odyssey towards terror when she encounters a distur fork out young hotel proprietor who is dominated by his mother. Throughout the film is a parallel to psychoanalysis as it attempts to scrap together limited parts to understand as a coherent whole. Even the films cinematographic techniques reinforce person images as being composed of fragmenta ry pieces. Part of Psychos visual appeal comes from Hitchcocks use of montage. James Naremore quotes Hitchcock describing montage as puttinglittle bits and pieces of film togetherMarion drives to her lover and a curtain of rain leads her to check into the Bates Motel. Paths and steps and roads are prevelant in Pyscho , the path between the motel and house which symbolises a path between the normal and the insane, in Psycho stairs lead to madness. In his documentary The PervertHYPERLINK http//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Perverts_Guide_to_CinemaHYPERLINK http//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Perverts_Guide_to_Cinemas Guide to Cinema, Slavoj iek remarks that Norman Bates mansion has three floors, paralleling the three levels that psychoanalysis attributes to the human mind the first floor would be the superego (Figure 2a), where Bates mother lives on the establish floor is then Bates ego (Figure 2b), where he functions as an apparently normal human being and finally, the wine cellar would be Bates id (Figure 2c).For Freud, most oppress memories relate to sexuality. One type, for example, derives from the primal photograph, where the child witnesses his parents having sex, then represses the storage of the scene. In Psycho, Norman Bates is said to have murdered his mother and her lover after finding them in bed together. Freud identified the tendency of a person who has experienced a traumatic event to re-live the negative event over and over, in action, in memory, or in dreams. A key aspect of the theory is the recommend to put oneself into situations where the traumatic experience is likely to recur. Some forms of sexual dysfunction are interpreted as examples of repetition compulsion for example, an individual spanked as a child may seek out masochistic sexual experiencesThe best known of Freuds theories about childhood sexuality is named from the mythological king Oedipus, who landed his father and hook up with his mother. As Freud described the coordinati on compound, a young boy is sexually attracted to his mother, and as a result desires to kill his father in order to possess the mother. This forbidden desire is then repressed, only to return later in neurotic form. In popular Freudianism, mothers are often seen as encouraging the Oedipal complex through possessive or flirtatious behavior toward sons. As Norman Bates tells Marion Crane, a boys best friend is his mother. (But also A son is a poor substitute for a lover.). Freud believed the purpose of psychoanalysis is to recover these repressed memories so that the patient can jalopy with them in the conscious mind. In Freudianism, a successfully combine personality is under go steady of the Ego.We see Norman engage in a discussion with Marion in the parlour where he reveals a desire to escape from mothers tyrannical grip, but cannot gain the will to do so. Norman fails to achieve the self-mastery which Freud claimed psychoanalysis may provide. At this stage Marion retires to h er room and decides to return to her old life.In the parlour adjacent to Marions room we see Norman remove a painting to reveal a spy-hole. The audience is forced into Normans secret world as he watches her undress. Normal develops masculine and sexual feelings towards Marion. Bates fudge ego of his mother is not happy about the prospect of an attractive young woman disrupting the love affair between mother and son. He even holds conversations with himself thinking hes speaking to his mother.While dressed as his mother, Bates with knife in hand murders Crane while she is taking a shower in one of the Bates motel rooms. During the shower scene the piercing violin strings play a large part in creating sheer terror during the horrific scene, screaming begins before Marions own shrieks. The murder during the shower scene destabilises the audience as the blade is pointed at her abdominal womb area, attacking the site of motherhood is perhaps a gesture to prevent her giving birth to men like himself see Figure 3a and 3b. From Freud we learn Normans id becomes the core of the psyche and determining force causing the mother half of Norman Bates to commit murder. Normans psyche represses this selective information causing the fear of reappearance. The compulsion to repeat is a manifestation of the power of the repressed (Freud, 1920), illustrating the strength of the make of the repressed and the unconscious.After the murder of Marion and Norman disposing of her in the swamp next to the house, the spectators turn to Norman to supervene upon Marion as its main focus in its subjective role. Later on, when surface-to-air missile and Lila search for evidence regarding Marions disapparance, Sam Loomis distracts Norman as Lila quietly walks up to the house to talk to Normans mother. She finds in the lower floor Normans mothers at peace(predicate) body which has been removed from its grave and preserved. At this point we realise Norman is two people. Norman is metamorp hosised and revealed as his Mother when as he attempts to kill again his disguise is stripped away and ripped off. The Norman self completely dies, while his macabre Mother self is brought to life, shown by his mothers hysterically-laughing face, animated and resurrected by the light.Normans restricted personal growth this can be linked with the Oedipus complex. During the development of the Oedipus Complex the child develops a strong consciousness and powerful urges for sexual possession of the opposite sex parent. This urge gives rise to serious problems. The boy identifies with his father, and in doing so, internalises the fathers moral standards consequently the boy takes on the morals from his father, forming the superego. In Normans case, the absense of his father has resulted in an unresolved oedipus complex which results in a weak superego. Perhaps its this reason why he struggles with identity disorder as he houses his mothers superego in attempt to compensate for the one which he never developed as a result of his fathers absence.At the end of the film the psychiatrist explains When reality came too close, when danger or desire threatened that illusion, he dressed up, even to a cheap wig he bought. Hed walk about the house, sit in her chair, speak in her voice. He was never all Norman, but he was often only Mother. Freud believed that traumatic events, usually from childhood, are repressed by the conscious mind. However, these destructive memories remain in the subconscious, where they are the source of neuroses and psychoses. The purpose of psychoanalysis is to recover these repressed memories so that the patient can deal with them in the conscious mind.The audience, although they had received an explanation for Normans actions, is left terrified and confused by the last scene of Norman and the manifestation of his split personality. Faced with this spectacle, Hitchcock forces the audience to examine their conscious self in coincidence to the eve nts that they had just played a role in. Psycho creates a fear not necessarily from the barbarity of the murders but from the subconscious identification with the films characters.To conclude, Hitchcock enforces the idea that all the basic emotions and sentiments derived from the film can be entangle by anyone as the unending battle between good and evil exists in all aspects of life. The effective use of character parallels and the creation of the audiences subjective role in the plot enables Hitchcock to entice terror and play a lingering sense of anxiety within the audience through a progressively increase theme. Freuds concept of the unconscious is so explicitly mirrored throughout the film. We have a seemingly normal woman whose balance is offset by a desire and which drives her to commit a financial crime. At the other end of the spectre we have again a man who most would think was righteous enough but due to his childhood and developmental restrictions has for other reaso ns allowed his unconscious to take full control of his conscious. According to Freud the essence of repression lies simply in the turning something away, and keeping it at a distance for the conscious Freud believed traumatic memories usually of childhood events are repressed as a defence mechanism which keeps the ego free of conflict and tension, however something can induce the momentary retrieval of a repressed memory and in the case of Norman Bates this triggered a psychotic in his mother psyche episode.