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Kevin Rook, Cole Craft, Noah Harrelson


Ms. Hathaway
Eng 3
April 29, 2014
Dissociative Identity Disorder In Norman Bates : A Psychological Look at What Drives People
To Become Two
How can someone, unknowingly become two different people? This complicated
diagnosis is called Dissociative Identity Disorder which, Involves marked discontinuity in sense
of self and sense of agency, accompanied by related alterations in affect, behavior,
consciousness, memory, perception, cognition, and sensory-motor functioning. (DSM 5). There
is one distinctive link between Norman Bates and Ed Gein, the real life character that he was
based off of, that is that they are both linked to overbearing mothers, emotional abuse and trained
hatred towards women. How could these actions affect a person and their mental health
afterwards?
The first stance that will be taken in this paper is the stance on the literature portion of
this disorder that has chosen to use, Psycho was used for one specific reason and that reason is
that it is the closest and most accurate representation of Dissociative Identity Disorder that could
be found. The secondary reason for using Psycho is because Psycho is a text that clearly conveys
DID and is based off of an actual person, which was Ed Gein that will be delved into more in the
coming paragraphs but in this moment this paper would like to diagnose Norman Bates, the main
character from Psycho.
So by definition in the DSM 5, Dissociative Identity Disorder means, Disruption of
identity characterized by two or more distinct personality states. (DSM 5) Its symptoms or
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signs include, lapses in memory, time blackouts in which the person does not remember how he
or she got there, being accused of lying when the person does not believe he or she is lying,
hearing voices inside their heads, not recognizing their own self in the mirror, feeling like more
than one person, and feeling like they are watching their life go by rather than living their own.
The treatments for this disease are simple because there is really only one. It is psychotherapy
and its a very long treatment process, most commonly known as being very effective but only
over prolonged periods of time. This that could cause Dissociative Identity Disorder is of course
trauma and it takes a bigger effect if it is early childhood trauma caused by someone close to
you. Denial is also very big in the process of developing DID, if you have problems in your
head and no one believes you your mind may develop a new way to make you think that the
problem is not there and that causes a person to develop this disorder. Comfort also plays a big
role in the coping with trauma so one may develop a new personality so that the trauma or the
thought of it will go away.
Norman Bates shows the signs of DID clearly in Psycho by Robert Bloch. You learn this
at the the end when it is revealed that his mother is dead. He talks to her throughout the book
and even holds conversations with her. This is a strong indicator of Dissociative Identity
Disorder. This disorder is common with attachment, trauma, and abuse. His mother never
physically abused him but mentally always never letting him out of her site just like Ed Geins
mother. In the film it gives you a glimpse of Normans room and it looks like it was his room
from when he was a child. After he killed his mother, he left it like that because of mental issues
and wanting to preserve what was left of his mother. The room symbolized how she used to
control him because of how tidy and clean it was. These are signs of how he was brought up and
more as the emotional stress that she may have put him through. After killing his mother and her
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lover from jealousy he was hospitalized and developed the mental illness of Dissociative Identity
Disorder. He developed her personality to make himself forget that she is dead and to try to
block out his guilt for killing her. He has different names Norman who is a child still
dependant on his mother, Norma which is a mother that is possessive of her child who kills
anyone that questions her existence, and Normal who is a normal person who goes through the
day to day life as a manager of the hotel. (Bloch)
Norman featured or showed some of the symptoms of dissociative identity disorder.
Before Norman murdered anybody he would fall asleep. During the time that he was out his
other identity, which was his mother, would come out and murder the woman he liked. After his
mother murdered the woman, he would fall back asleep. When he would wake back up, he
would find the body and he would not remember anything. He would have conversations with
his mother, but his mother was dead. His mother knew what he was thinking about. She was
always inside of his head and would come out when she wanted to punish him, He Realized
that Mother had used her keys.(Bloch) Norman would feel like he was him and his mother. He
tried to keep her out sometimes, It was locking the doors all week long which gave him his new
sense of security. He'd taken her keys away from her, too--the keys to the house and the keys to
the motel.(Bloch) Norman showed three of the symptoms of dissociative identity disorder. Him
having dissociative identity disorder caused him to go insane. He was eventually sent to a mental
institution where his mother completely took control over him and his mind. (Bloch)
Norman was abused mentally and physically throughout his life by his mother. His
mother would not let him go anywhere nor let him see or have any affection to women. His
mother laid down the law for him. By her doing this, he felt dependent on her, even though he
murdered her. He murdered her because she found a man to love and it made Norman feel like
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she betrayed him. He felt like she betrayed him because she went against her rule that she told
him. The insane mamas boy that was created by an overbearing mother was inspired by the real
life murderer of Ed Gein. (Bloch)
Ed Gein was born in La Crosse, Wisconsin and raised by his religious mother Augusta.
She taught him and his brother the evils of women so that they would not get cast into hell. Even
though their father was around, Augusta took full control of raising her children. When they
moved to a farm in Plainfield, Wisconsin his mother kept him from having any friends from
school. Ed followed her strict rules because he saw her as the only thing in the world that he
could trust or believe in. She often beat them to keep them from doing wrong and even
throughout their teens they had little contact with the outside world. After the death of his father,
Ed only had the company of his brother Henry and his mother. Henry started to believe that Ed
had an unhealthy attachment to their mother. Henry often criticized their mother in front of Ed
and it made Ed mad because she was the best person in the world to him. Henry mysteriously
died in 1944 while him and Ed were fighting a brush fire near their farm. Henry had went
missing and Ed called the police to search for him. When the police got there, Ed surprisingly
led them straight to henrys body which had bruises on his head and was not around any
scorched earth from the fire. Nobody would suspect Ed because of his shyness and because it
was his brother. This is where the first signs of insanity appear in Ed Geins mind. When his
mother Augusta died from strokes, Ed Gein was all alone. The only person that mattered to him
was gone and he went over the edge. (Bell and Bardsley)
Ed spent most of his time alone reading about death and how to get bodies out of graves.
He was fascinated by women and the power they had over men. Ed Gein often dreamed of being
a woman because of his unhealthy attachment to his mother. He started digging up the graves of
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recently deceased women and made trophies of their skin. When he dug up these graves, he
would cut off some body parts that he would use for several different uses in his house. He
would cover his furniture in human skin and wear some clothing that he made from several body
parts. After several disappearances around plainfield, Police started investigating every possible
suspect. They soon inspected around the Gein farmhouse and found the remains of several
people. When the police went inside, they found out the enormity of Ed Geins crimes and saw
all of the horrible things he had done. (Bell and Bardsley)
Ed Gein became a well known serial killer. People around the world were disgusted, yet
intrigued by his murders. It wasnt that he killed so many people, it was how he did it and why.
Robert Bloch was inspired by the story of Ed Gein and decided to create Psycho. It is unknown
if Ed had DID, but Robert Bloch found a way to explain Eds mentality so that people could
understand the killer. Like Ed, Norman Bates coveted women. He wanted them, but thought
they were evil because of the extreme views forced upon him by his mother. Norman Bates
struggles with his horror of the feminine by alternately performing it and destroying it.(Negra).
Ed Gein also tried to become feminine when he made his suit of skin. Both men ended up
having a twisted view of the world which led them to destroy people they thought were evil and
could harm them.
Eddie showed no signs of remorse or emotion during the many hours of interrogation.
When he talked about the murders and of his grave robbing escapades he spoke very matter-of-
factly, even cheerfully at times. He had no concept of the enormity of his crimes.(Bell and
Bardsley).
Because of his psychopathic mentality, Ed Gein was not found guilty. He escaped the
death penalty and lived out his life happily at a mental institution. He could not see what he did
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wrong just like the way Norman Bates thought he was serving justice. The reason Robert Bloch
had to add in DID and explain Normans mentality for Psycho was because it was so hard to
explain how a person could commit such crimes. DID would have helped people to understand
that Norman was not in his right mind and obviously had no idea what he was doing. In reality,
Ed Gein knew what he was doing and entirely believed that he had to kill those women because
they were evil. There was really no excuse for what he did other than his overbearing mother
and even with that she still did not teach him to kill. It would have been hard for people to see
the true reality behind Norman and Ed: some people have twisted views and believe
wholeheartedly that killing is a way of finding righteousness and serving justice. It is even
harder for people to realize how truly evil a human mind can be. Robert Bloch also added in
DID because it was something strange. DID is uncommon and people were intrigued and
interested by one man acting as two people. Even today, people love to experience scary movies
that contain unspeakable actions and grotesque scenes, but they often have plots and motives
behind the killing that keeps audiences watching. The true horror behind murder, abuse, and
pain is that people have come to expect it and it no longer surprises us. Writers like Robert
Bloch have to come up with new ways to explain evil just to keep us entertained.



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Works Cited
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<http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/916186-overview>.
Bell, Rachael, and Marilyn Bardsley. "Ed Gein." Crime Library. N.p., n.d. Web. 24 Apr.
2014.http://www.crimelibrary.com/serial_killers/notorious/gein/bill_1.html

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