Psychosis is a 1959 Robert Bloch book. The novel tells the story of Norman Bates, a motel employee who fights with a power mother and gets pulled into a series of murders. The novel is widely recognized by the reader community and is considered one of the most influential horror books of the 20th century.
about the author
Robert Albert Bloch (04/05/1917-23/09/1994) is an American science fiction writer who wrote mainly in the genres of criminal 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, shot by Alfred Hitchcock. In addition, Robert Bloch's Psychosis served as the basis for a number of other, less successful films.
Bloch wrote hundreds of stories and more than 30 novels. He was one of the youngest members of Lovecraft's circle and began his professional writing career immediately after graduation, at the age of 17. He was a protege of G.F. Lovecraft, who was the first to seriously notice his talent. However, although Bloch began his career by imitating Lovecraft and his idea of "cosmic horror," he later began to specialize in crime and horror stories.
At the beginning of his career, Bloch was the author of magazines such as Strange Tales, as well as a prolific screenwriter and main author of science fiction magazines and the fandom in general.
He won the Hugo Award, Bram Stoker Award, and World Fantasy Award. Bloch was president of America's Science Fiction Writers. He was a member of the Writers Guild of America and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
Plot: tie
Norman Bates, a middle-aged bachelor, is dominated by his mother, a vicious Puritan old woman who forbids him to live his life. Together they run a small motel in Fairweil, but since the state moved the highway to the far from the hotel, things have been on the decline. In the midst of heated debate between them comes a client, a young woman named Mary Crane.
Mary is on the run after impulsively stealing $ 40,000 from a client at a real estate company where she works. She stole the money so that her boyfriend, Sam Loomis, paid off the debts and they were finally able to get married. Mary arrives at the motel after accidentally turning off the main road. Exhausted, she accepts Bates' invitation to have dinner with him at his house. An invitation that makes Mrs. Bates furious. She screams: "I will kill this bitch!". These words did not go past Mary's ears.
Action development
During lunch, Mary gently suggests that Bates put his mother in a psychiatric hospital, but he denies that there is anything wrong with her. “We all go crazy sometimes,” he says. Mary wished good night and returned to her room. After a few moments, a figure resembling an old woman scares Mary with a butcher's knife, and then decapitates her.
Bates, who passed out after dinner, returns to the motel and finds Mary's bloody corpse. He is convinced that his mother is a killer. He considers whether to put her in jail, but changes his mind after he had a nightmare in which he drowns in quicksand. His mother comes to comfort him, and he decides to get rid of Mary's body, things and car in the swamp and continue to live as before.
Meanwhile, Mary's sister, Leela, tells Sam about her sister's disappearance. Soon they are joined by Milton Arbogast, a private investigator hired by Mary's boss to get the stolen money. Sam and Leela agree to allow Arbogast to search for the girl. In the end, Arbogast meets with Bates, who says that Mary left after one night at the motel; when Milton Arbogast asks to speak with Mrs. Bates, he refuses him. This causes Arbogast to be suspicious, and he calls Leela and tells her that he will try to talk with Mrs. Bates. When he enters the house, the same mysterious figure who killed Mary ambushes him in the lobby and kills him with a razor (judging by the reviews on Robert Bloch's Psychosis, this is the most sinister and intriguing moment in the book).
Climax
Sam and Leela go to Fairvale to find Arbogast and meet with the city 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 actually gets into the house to conduct her own investigation. There she finds various books on occultism, pathopsychology, metaphysics, one of which is full of pornographic images. During a conversation with Sam, Bates says his mother was just pretending to be dead. He talked to her while she was in the medical facility. Bates then tells Sam that Leela tricked him and went to the house and that his mother was waiting for her. Bates then hits Sam on the head with a bottle of liquor. He loses consciousness.
In the house, Leela with horror discovers the mummified corpse of Mrs. Bates on the floor in the cellar. While she screams, a figure with a knife bursts into the room - Norman Bates, dressed in his mother's clothes. Sam regains consciousness, enters the room and neutralizes Norman before he can harm Leela.
Denouement
At the police station, Sam is talking to the psychiatrist who examined Bates, while the rescue team is working, taking the car and the bodies of Mary and Arbogast from 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 young child.
Over time, closed, clumsy and filled with boiling rage, Norman became a secret transvestite, posing as his mother. A bookworm, he became interested in occultism, spiritualism, and satanism. When his mother brought a lover named Joe Considine, Bates poisoned both of them because of jealousy, forging a death note for his mother. In attempts to suppress the blame for the murder, he developed a split personality. He took the mother’s corpse from the cemetery and kept it. And whenever hallucinations showed up, he drank a lot, dressed in her clothes and spoke to himself in her voice. The “mother” personality killed Mary because she was jealous of Norman, who was attached to another woman.
Bates was declared insane and placed in a psychiatric hospital for life. Days later, the personality of the “mother” completely captures Bates’s mind; he actually becomes a mother to himself.
Book Reviews
- "Psychosis" is surprisingly readable and, in turn, believable and terrible. The reader will enjoy reading the novel, and it can be said that in general, the book is still memorable fifty years after its first publication. Reading a novel may just surprise you.
- Many people like the book no less than the film, but for various reasons. The film is worse, but the novel reveals the psychology of all the characters, it is much more informative than just a horror film. Bloch's writing style is well suited to the material - free, almost noir in places. Definitely recommended for reading, even if you've already seen the movie.
- This is actually a well-written book. And this is a classic. Bloch claimed that everything that made the film so wonderful is in the book: the murder of the protagonist at the beginning of the book, just like Hitchcock did in the film. In general, the film and the book complement each other perfectly.
Allusion to real events
In November 1957, two years before the publication of Bloch's book Psychosis, Ed Gain was arrested in his hometown of Plainfield, Wisconsin, for the murder of two women. During a search of his house, police found furniture, silverware and even clothes made of human skin and some parts of the body. The psychiatrists who examined him suggested that he could pretend to be his dead mother, whom the neighbors described as a Puritan who dominated his son.
During the arrest of Heine, Bloch lived quite near Plainfield, in Wayaweg. Although Bloch did not know about Hein’s case at that time, he began to write with the idea that a neighboring person could be a monster who doesn’t even appear in the gossip of a small town’s life. The novel, one of the few that Bloch wrote about insane killers, was almost complete when Gein and his actions were revealed, so Bloch inserted a link to Hein in one of the last chapters. A few years later, Bloch was surprised when his attention was drawn to the news about the life of Hein in isolation from a religiously fanatical mother. Bloch discovered, "how close the imaginary character I created was reminiscent of the real Ed Gain, both explicitly and in his motives."
Sequels of the novel
Bloch wrote two sequels: Psychosis II (1982) and Psychopath's House (1990). None of them were related to the sequels of the film. In Robert Bloch's novel Psychosis II, Bates escapes from the hospital, disguising himself as a nun, and sets off for Hollywood. In "Psycho's House," the murders begin again when Bates Motel reopens as a tourist attraction.
In 2016, a fourth book was published entitled Robert Bloch's Psychosis: The Sanitarium, written by Chet Williamson. 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.
Adaptations
Flea's “Psychosis” was adapted in 1960 for the feature film directed by Alfred Hitchcock. The adaptation was written by Joseph Stefano, starring Anthony Perkins (Bates) and Janet Lee (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 the pre-screening and that none of them would be allowed into the cinema after the film began. The advertising campaign also urged the audience not to reveal the end of the plot. The Hitchcock version of the film took first place in the list of the hundred most exciting films according to the American Institute of Cinematography. Twenty-three years after the release of the Hitchcock film and three years after the director’s death, three more sequel films were released one after another - Psycho II, Psycho III, Psycho IV: At the Beginning.
Gus Van Sant made a remake of the original film in 1998, based on Robert Bloch's original Psychosis, in which almost every angle and dialogue line were duplicated from the original. Starring: Vince Vaughn - Bates, Anne Heche - Marion Crane. This film was poorly received by critics and failed at the box office.