I'd wager that both Norma and Norman tested the waters of flirtation and allowing sexual tension between the two of them to grow. Both were already incredibly emotionally codependent, and would have been mentally and emotionally compromised in their isolation together. As Norman would've grown past adolescence, become more physically a man, attractive, his mother might have experienced conflicting feelings towards him as wanting to be both his nurturer and longing to be nurtured by a strong male figure in return.
Norman was the male figure for a time as he approached adulthood and sexual maturity. Through being groomed as believing his possible sexual attraction was normal if his mother justified it through returning emotional intimacy, his mother might have realized how on thin ice they were and her relationship with another man was a way out of a budding incestual relationship. To Norman, the rejection was devastating and he could not conceive of a life without her. Abusive or not. Which is fact as we know he snapped.
I don't really feel they had a full blown physical relationship but both toyed with the idea. Norman must have been conditioned to wanting it more. Norma knew it would be taboo. And I think that, perhaps, the relationship being in that sort of limbo was psychologically harder on Norman because it was always between inappropriate/taboo (not concretely defined as sexual/romantic) and a strictly mother/son dynamic. The line blurred. My impression was always that they were emotionally invested in a romantic capacity yet both either were too afraid to progress to sex or the man in Norma's life served as the catalyst for halting that progression.
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ecarle
7 years ago
I'd wager that both Norma and Norman tested the waters of flirtation and allowing sexual tension between the two of them to grow.
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That's a thoughtful, cogent analysis of what is at least suggested by "the facts" as Hitchcock sparingly lets them out in his film. The "younger years of Mrs. Bates and Norman" have been give more of a fan fiction workout in the sequel Psycho IV: The Beginning and the current Bates Motel series, and perhaps that "infects" our knowledge of Norman's roots with Mother but...
...within the Hitchcock original, the old crone who mocks him and barks at him incessantly nonetheless conjures up a younger version who may have been far more emotionally entangled with him.
The shrink offers us some "Where'd he come up with THAT idea?" analysis:
"For years, Norman and his Mother lived as if there was no one else in the world, and then she met a man. And it seemed to Norman as if she threw him over for this man....now the mother was a clinging, demanding woman..."(Again, where did the shrink GET these facts/ideas?)
And (as noted above) Norman's quote: "My mother and I were more than happy."
Its enough back in 1960 to think the thoughts that have "taken flight" with Psycho IV and Bates Motel.
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