The question of the "Double"
neverending duality bordering insanity and consciusness (part 1)
The theme of the double frequently occurs in western literature of all times.
The unsettling meeting with the “ true self”or the “different ego” completing a fragmented personality is an excellent theatrical device which creates comic situations or paradoxical misunderstandings, besides being a means inducing to read the characters under a psychological-existentialist point of view-
This theme is present not only in literary texts but in any form of artistic expression: some masterpieces in fimmaking have investigated the psyche both in sane dispositions and alienated ones. In this sense, probably for my absolutely passion for Alfred Hitchcock ‘s world, I like to mention “Psycho”, a worldly known film of 1960, where Freudian theory on the double is masterly represented together with another intricate complex example of double designed in the false identity into a crescendo of suspension led by the double plot of the movie in the movie: “Vertigo”.
The double personality of Norman Bates, the owner of the motel, symbolically isolated and in the same time identifiable to drivers is a metaphor for “invisible “ “visible”.It is not suddenly evident the psychological disease in Norman Bates, a young man apparently intimidated and fascinated by the woman arrived under a heavy rain which leads her to stop at the motel, in the meantime he is pleased and seems to kindly welcome her wih a touch of attraction. Two different characters, two different kinds of double, Norman is a split personality sick with a morbid affection towards his mother, Marion Crane is a confident smart woman who shows another side of her personality: the dark side one man can have, in this case the ability to commit a steal with a natural unexpected speed, escaping by her car and yet remaining rational and aware of what she has to keep on doing.
Murders are metaphors for killing a side of the ego, the obscure part affecting life and capacity of discerning , Norman has lived with his possessive mother, when she has an affair with a man he kills her trying redemption by embalming the corpse and getting into her to the point to be herself , dressing with her clothes and speaking with her voice.
His mind is haunted by the stronger personality of the mother and his weak attitude who has strentgh only if he turns into her mother ‘s soul..Attracted by Marion he therefore thinks through her mother’ s mind and he will kill the woman in the shower, the water coming down as if it were the heavy rain forcing her to find a shelter… After the murder Norman suddenly awakes from his soul sleep , aware of what has tragically happened he starts cleaning tidying and restoring the shower into normality, however he is not Norman himself who makes evidences of the crime disappear, in reality he acts bustling to get everything in order because his mother is the murderer to him, so he has the “moral task” to protect her, now the unique “mother -son” is set, and the double has got into an alienated one.
Norman, a serious shy young man, then Marion the perfect secretary and sensible woman reveal different personalities coexisting in their consciusness, as Pirandello affirms :people see only a facade ,behind this the true soul of the human being is hidden, not one only but plenty, or really none..!
Violence can often be on e of the many symptoms revealing our basic instincts, repressed in the path of our life by principles and rules imposed by society and family, as Freud defines in his studies about the SuperEgo-
“The individual does actually carry on a double existence:one designed to serve his own purposes and another as a link in a chain, in which he serves against, or at any rate without, any volition of his own”
………part 1