Norman as soon as possible becoming norm It starts with what seems like moments of oblivion when she talks like she’s her mother, but then you see her killing Bradley as her mother, testifying as her mother, that she’s really her mother until it becomes a complete change afterwards of his death. She wore her robes and a blond wig around the house. The more Norma sniffs at him, the more rude he becomes. During a psychotic break when he recognizes Norma, he drives to a local bar and drunkenly has sex with someone who has the wrong idea about who “Norma” really is. He doesn’t remember anything.
Under the guise of “protecting” Norman, Norma dictates what she wants him to remember and what he doesn’t after the psychotic break. Guess who comes back to him when he attempts to commit suicide by turning up the gas heater so high that they die in each other’s arms by morning. Except he survived, and he lives in his hallucinations. However, the attachment is so hardwired that he exhumes her body after the funeral and makes her sit in a chair at home while he lives in a state of constant psychosis and sees her everywhere. If he committed murder, he was actually behind it. The only thing that speaks louder than Norma is evidence.
Perhaps Norma’s worst sin is lack. He had known about her psychotic breaks even since she was attacked by her abusive husband, prompting Norman to punch her in the head with such ferocity that he accidentally killed her. The memory lapse that follows makes it easy for Norma to drag the body under a furniture shelf and convince Norman that her father died from an accident. Norma could have reported it as an accident and used the insurance money to start her son in a treatment program instead of fulfilling her dream of owning a motel. He should also have checked himself into therapy while he was at it.
Would Norman have had a body count beyond his father if Norma had decided not to “protect” him as he repeats ad nauseam but started treatment after the incident? No one knows. It’s doubtful that even Hitchcock or Robert Bloch, the author of the book that inspired the original film, could answer this.
Although not everyone who disappeared in White Pine Bay was Norman’s victim, and Alex Romero also had corpses to answer for, Norman probably had a better chance of getting better if he had started therapy as a teenager. It’s too late by the time Norma, at Romero’s insistence, pleads with Norman to sign the papers committing herself to a facility. He is no longer a minor who can be admitted involuntarily. He’s also older and wiser, trying to escape and eventually lying about a massive improvement so that he, as a legal adult, can sign out. He even flushes his drugs down the toilet after his death to keep his psychosis alive.
The normal Louise Bates dominates the mind of her younger son whether he is corporeal or incorporeal. Maybe that explains why he doesn’t fight his older brother after he charges at him with a knife and ends up dying of a gunshot wound in self-defense. He knew he would go where he wanted, to the grave right next to his mother.