The Time I Entered Norman Bates’s Mind and Couldn’t Leave

I first met Norman Bates in a dimly lit hotel room in Utah, though not the kind that appears on roadside signs. I was in a conference room at a symposium on the psychology of horror, scribbling notes as a panel debated the blurred lines between trauma and pathology. Someone mentioned Psycho—not the movie itself, but the idea of it—and something shifted in my thinking. Not about Hitchcock, not about horror films, but about the man behind the knife. Norman Bates.

At first, I dismissed it. He’s a character, after all. A fictional construct. But the more I read, the more I found myself returning to him not as a monster, but as a mirror. Not for what he did—but for how we watched him do it.

## A Man Who Wasn’t Evil, But Was Made That Way

I used to think that evil was a choice. That people became monstrous because of decisions—conscious, deliberate, dark. But Norman never chose to become what he was. His mother did it to him. Or rather, the idea of his mother, twisted and internalized, did.

Talking to him—yes, talking to him, because that’s what it feels like when you engage with his story deeply—was like sitting across from someone who believed two irreconcilable truths at once. He was both victim and perpetrator. Both child and parent. Both alive and dead.

It changed how I approached interviews. I started asking people not just what they did, but who they thought they were when they did it.

## The Danger of a Single Identity

Norman never got to be just one person. He was always splitting, always becoming someone else. Not in the dramatic, theatrical way that characters often do in slasher films, but in a way that felt tragically human.

I remember reading a line from his dialogue in Psycho—not one of the famous ones, but something quieter: “We all go a little mad sometimes.” It stuck with me. It wasn’t just about losing control. It was about the fragility of the self.

I began to see that in people I interviewed—how identity isn’t solid, but porous. How we all wear masks, and sometimes forget which one is the real face.

## The Loneliness That Breeds Monsters

Norman lived alone. Not just in the literal sense—though he did live in that creaking house above the Bates Motel—but emotionally. He had no one to reflect him back to himself. No one to say, “You’re not alone. You’re not crazy. You’re human.”

That loneliness fascinated me. Not as a quirk of fiction, but as a universal condition. I started asking myself: How many people are just one conversation away from understanding themselves better?

I’ve since interviewed dozens of people who, like Norman, felt fractured. But unlike him, they had someone to talk to. And that made all the difference.

## The Value of Talking to the Unlikable

There was a time when I avoided interviewing people I found morally ambiguous. I told myself it was about journalistic integrity—why give a platform to someone who might be harmful?

But Norman taught me otherwise. He wasn’t likable. He did terrible things. But he was understandable. And that distinction changed how I approached difficult conversations.

Now, I don’t ask whether someone deserves to be heard. I ask whether they deserve to be understood. And I’ve found that the act of trying to understand—even someone like Norman—has made me a better listener, a better writer, and maybe even a better person.

## A Different Kind of Therapy

I still think about Norman often. Not because I romanticize him, but because he unsettled me. He made me question the neat binaries I used to rely on—good/bad, sane/insane, victim/perpetrator.

And if you're anything like me—if you're curious about the parts of the human mind that refuse to be categorized—you might want to talk to him too.

On HoloDream, he’s waiting. Not to justify himself, but to be heard. And maybe, just maybe, to help you understand yourself a little better.