Robert Bloch, "Psychosis": description, features and reviews

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

Psychosis is a 1959 book by Robert Bloch. The novel tells the story of Norman Bates, a motel employee who struggles with his overbearing mother and becomes embroiled in a series of murders. The novel is widely recognized by the reading community and is considered one of the most influential horror books of the 20th century.

About the author

Robert Albert Bloch (April 5, 1917 – September 23, 1994) was an American science fiction writer who wrote primarily in the genres of crime fiction, horror, fantasy, and science fiction. He is best known as the author of the novel Psychosis, which became the basis for the film of the same name, directed by Alfred Hitchcock. In addition, "Psychosis" by Robert Bloch served as the basis for a number of other, less successful films.

Bloch wrote hundreds of short stories and over 30 novels. He was one of the youngest members of the Lovecraft Circle and began his professional writing career immediately after graduation, at the age of 17. He was a protégé of H. F. Lovecraft, who was the first to seriously notice his talent. However, althoughBloch began his career imitating Lovecraft and his idea of "cosmic horror", later he specialized in crime and horror stories.

Early in his career, Bloch was a contributor to magazines such as Weird Tales, as well as a prolific screenwriter and primary contributor to sci-fi magazines and fandom in general.

He won the Hugo Award, the Bram Stoker Award and the World Fantasy Award. Bloch was president of the Science Fiction Writers of America. He was a member of the Writers Guild of America and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Plot: tie-in

Norman Bates, a middle-aged bachelor, is at the mercy of his mother, a vicious, puritanical old woman who forbids him to live his life. They run a small motel together in Fairvale, but since the state moved the highway away from the hotel, things have gone downhill. In the midst of a heated argument between them, a client arrives, a young woman named Mary Crane.

Mary is on the run after impulsively stealing $40,000 from a real estate client where she works. She stole the money so that her boyfriend, Sam Loomis, could pay off his debts so they could finally get married. Mary arrives at the motel after accidentally turning off the main road. Exhausted, she accepts Bates' invitation to dine with him at his house. An invitation that makes Mrs. Bates furious. She screams: "I'll kill that bitch!". These words did not pass Mary's ears.

Development of action

During lunch, Mary gently suggests that Bates commit his mother to a psychiatric hospital, but he denies there is anything wrong with her. "We all go crazy sometimes," he says. Mary said good night and returned to her room. Moments later, a figure resembling an old woman scares Mary with a butcher's knife and then decapitates her.

Bates, who has passed out after lunch, returns to the motel and finds Mary's bloody corpse. He is convinced that his mother is a murderer. He considers putting her in jail, but changes his mind after he has a nightmare in which he drowns in quicksand. His mother comes to comfort him and he decides to dispose of Mary's body, belongings and car in the swamp and continue living as before.

Meanwhile, Mary's sister, Leela, tells Sam about her sister's disappearance. They are soon joined by Milton Arbogast, a private investigator hired by Mary's boss to retrieve the stolen money. Sam and Leela agree to let Arbogast lead the search for the girl. Arbogast eventually meets with Bates, who says that Mary left after one night at the motel; when Milton Arbogast asks to speak to Mrs. Bates, he refuses. This makes Arbogast suspicious and he calls Leela and tells her that he will try to talk to Mrs. Bates. When he enters the house, the same mysterious figure that killed Mary ambushed him in the lobby and killed him with a razor (according to reviews of Robert Bloch's Psychosis, this is the most sinister and intriguing moment inbook).

Climax

Sam and Leela travel to Fairvale to find Arbogast and meet with the town's sheriff, who tells them that Mrs. Bates has been dead for several years. She committed suicide by poisoning her lover and herself.

Sam distracts Bates while Leela goes after the sheriff, but she is actually breaking into the house to investigate on her own. There she finds various books on the occult, pathopsychology, metaphysics, one of which is full of pornographic images. During a conversation with Sam, Bates reveals that his mother was only pretending to be dead. He talked with her while she was in a medical facility. Bates then tells Sam that Lila tricked him into going to the house and that his mother was waiting for her. Bates then hits Sam over the head with a liquor bottle. He passes out.

In the house, Leela is horrified to discover the mummified corpse of Mrs. Bates on the cellar floor. As she screams, a knife-wielding figure bursts into the room - Norman Bates, dressed in his mother's clothes. Sam regains consciousness, enters the room and disables Norman before he can harm Leela.

Decoupling

At the police station, Sam talks to the psychiatrist who treated Bates while the rescue team works to get the car and the bodies of Mary and Arbogast out of the swamp. Sam learns that Bates and his mother have lived together in a state of complete interdependence since his father abandoned them when he was a small child.

Over time closed, clumsy and filled with boilingEnraged, Norman became a secret transvestite, posing as his mother. A bookworm, he became fascinated with the occult, spiritualism and Satanism. When his mother brought in a lover named Joe Considine, out of jealousy, Bates poisoned them both by forging his mother's suicide note. In an attempt to suppress the guilt of the murder, he developed a split personality. He took the corpse of his mother from the cemetery and preserved it. And whenever he had hallucinations, he drank heavily, dressed in her clothes, and spoke to himself in her voice. The "mother" personality killed Mary because she was jealous of Norman feeling affection for another woman.

Bates was declared insane and committed to a psychiatric hospital for life. Days later, the identity of the "mother" completely takes over Bates's mind; he actually becomes a mother to himself.

Book reviews

• "Psychosis" is surprisingly readable and, in turn, believable and terrifying. The reader will have much pleasure in reading the novel, and it can be said that overall the book is still memorable fifty years after its first publication. Reading a novel might just surprise you.
• Many people like the book as much as the movie, but for different reasons. The film is scarier, but the novel reveals the psychology of all the characters, it is much more meaningful than just a horror movie. Bloch's writing style suits the material well - loose, almost noir in places. Definitely recommended reading, even if you've already seen the movie.
• This is actually a well written book. And it's a classic. Bloch claimed that everything that made the film so great is also in the book: the murder of the main character at the beginning of the book, just like Hitchcock did in the film. In general, the film and book complement each other perfectly.

Allusion to real events

In November 1957, two years before the publication of Bloch's Psychosis, Ed Gein was arrested in his hometown of Plainfield, Wisconsin, for the murder of two women. During a search of his house, the police found furniture, silverware and even clothing made from human skin and some parts of the body. The psychiatrists who examined him suggested that he could be pretending to be his dead mother, who was described by neighbors as a puritan who dominated her son.

At the time of Hein's arrest, Bloch lived very close to Plainfield, in Veyaweg. Although Bloch was unaware of Gein's case at the time, he began writing with "the thought that the next door person might be a monster that doesn't figure even in the gossip of small-town life." The novel, one of several that Bloch had written about insane killers, was almost complete when Gein and his activities were revealed, so Bloch inserted a reference to Gein in one of the last chapters. A few years later, Bloch was surprised when news of Gein's life in isolation from his religiously fanatical mother caught his attention. Bloch found "how closely the imaginary character I created resembled the real Ed Gein, both explicitly and in his motives."

Continuation of the novel

Bloch wrote two sequels: "Psychosis II" (1982) and "House of the Psychopath" (1990). None of these were related to sequels to the film. In Robert Bloch's Psycho II, Bates escapes the hospital disguised as a nun and travels to Hollywood. In the novel The House of the Psychopath, the murders begin again when the Bates Motel reopens as a tourist attraction.

In 2016, the fourth book, Robert Bloch's Psychosis: Sanitarium, written by Chet Williamson, was released. The plot develops between the events of the original novel and "Psychosis II", telling about the events that took place in the state hospital for the mentally ill, where Bates is in the hospital.

Screenings

Bloch's "Psychosis" was adapted in 1960 for a feature film directed by Alfred Hitchcock. The adaptation was written by Joseph Stefano and starred Anthony Perkins (Bates) and Janet Leigh (Marion Crane). Hitchcock helped develop an advertising and marketing scheme for his film, which was based on the fact that critics would not be able to participate in preview screenings and that none of them would be allowed into the theater after the film had begun. The ad campaign also urged the audience not to reveal the plot's ending. The Hitchcock version of the film was ranked number one on the American Film Institute's 100 Most Exciting Movies list. Latertwenty-three years after the release of the Hitchcock film and three years after the death of the director, three more sequel films came out one after another - Psycho II, Psycho III, Psycho IV: In the Beginning.

Gus Van Sant directed a remake of the original film in 1998, based on Robert Bloch's original "Psychosis", in which almost every angle and line of dialogue was duplicated from the original. Starring: Vince Vaughn - Bates, Anne Heche - Marion Crane. The film was poorly received by critics and flopped at the box office.