Robert Bloch’s Psycho: Some Pathological Contexts

Abstract

Of all the horror myths which have sunk into the Western unconscious during the twentieth century, Psycho is one of the most powerful, although principally in its manifestation in Hitchcock’s film. Here I want to say a little about Robert Bloch’s original story, published in 1959, and to put some specific questions about it. It needs to be noted at the outset that this is an odd and difficult task, because of a peculiarity in the story itself: which is that it contains its own psychological explanation, attached near the end as an authenticated account by a psychiatrist of a series of events which were, in fact, closely based on real incidents.