Psycho

Content Warning: This guide describes and analyzes the source text’s treatment of trauma, abuse, and mental health conditions. The novel contains stigmatizing depictions of cross-dressing and an individual with a mental health condition, which relies on outdated and offensive tropes that connect mental health conditions with violence.

Mirrors are a symbol closely associated with Norman Bates, and, to a lesser extent, Mary Crane. Norman has a fractured sense of self, torn between the overbearing persona of Norma and the infantilized persona of his child self, which he reverts to when dealing with “Mother.” When Norman spies on Mary through the office’s secret peephole, he can only catch a glimpse of her nude body reflected in the mirror. However, the moment he sees her, he becomes dizzy, and the mirror becomes distorted and wavy, reflecting the distortions in his mind. Later, the novel reveals that Norma once punished him for looking at his nude body in the mirror:

From then on it seemed he got a headache almost every time he looked in a mirror. Mother finally took him to the doctor and the doctor said he needed glasses. The glasses helped, but he still had trouble seeing properly when he gazed into a mirror.