The Shadow Behind a Curtain

Lejla Panjeta
2 days ago
6 min read

Updated: 2 hours ago

Psycho © Paramount Pictures 1960. All Rights Reserved. — *Psycho* © Paramount Pictures 1960. All Rights Reserved.

A chilling use of shadow in Le Manoir du Diable (1896) is often credited as the first instance of a vampire and horror film. Then shadows grew teeth, claws, and distorted reality in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920) and Nosferatu (1922). They returned as a revolution in Eisenstein’s intellectual montage in Battleship Potemkin (1925). All the while, Hitchcock lurked in the shadows, combining these film language techniques into a masterpiece of terror. He didn’t need fangs or an army, just a boy, a toilet, and a knife behind a curtain. What makes the shower scene so terrifying is that we don’t see anything in 52 anthological cuts and 78 camera setups, but during these 45 seconds, we feel and perceive everything.

The terror in Psycho doesn’t come from what we see, but from how we see it: through keyholes and from behind curtains. In Psycho, the shadow isn’t just a cinematographic choice—it’s a confession. The true genius of the Oedipal buffet of Psycho lies in the mirror it holds up. We scream at our own shadows. Psycho forces us to look at the parts of ourselves we’d rather flush away.

Carl Gustav Jung claims that everyone has a shadow, and the less it is embodied in the individual’s conscious life, the darker and denser it is. Master of suspense Alfred Hitchcock, an archetypal trickster, in 1960 delivered the buried Id from the basement of Freud’s unconsciousness. Not as a metaphor, but literal embodiment of the monster, suppressed, neglected, and hidden in forgotten parts of the psyche, to haunt cinema and mass media brought up generations. Psycho is not just a thriller noir; it is a cinematic trapdoor of the shadow archetype, summoned from Jungian theory and sprinkled with the anxiety of Freudian repression in the most unsettling taxidermy collection of an empty Victorian house, ruled by the dead body of the Mother.

Shadow mother

What makes Norman Bates, the cinema’s most well-mannered monster, truly terrifying isn't just the fact that he keeps his mother's corpse in the cellar. Still, even for Hitchcock, it’s very unsettling. Norman embodies something much deeper and darker—the double agent’s secret operations of his shadow, of which the ego is not aware. Jung’s shadow archetype represents the unacknowledged parts of the ego; the wild, dark urges we dare not name, that refuse to go away. They skulk about in our dreams, our projections, and in Norman’s case, in a wig and dress in the upstairs bedroom.

Mother Bates, though dead, has never felt more alive. She’s the shadow incarnate: a grotesque fusion of Norman’s guilt, fear, desire, and trauma. He has not only repressed her but has also absorbed her by splitting his ego in half, giving her a voice and a knife. His denial of Mother’s death is both symbolic and clinical. He is not merely haunted; he is the haunting. Christopher Vogler, who adapted Campbell’s monomyth for modern narratives, notes that the shadow archetype is psychosis incarnate, and Jung might argue that Bates represents the shadow’s possession of the ego. [Editor’s note: JCF will host a webinar featuring Christopher Vogler on September 13. Click here for details]. To an ego identified with the superego and persona, the shadow reeks of decay and epitomizes evil. By opening to the experiences of the shadow, an individual becomes whole, but it's a pact with the devil. Because you never know what you might find in the basement.

Norman Bates wasn’t born in a vacuum; he was stitched together from the deranged psyche of one of America’s most notorious murderers: Ed Gein. Hitchcock saw in him the raw materials for a new kind of cinematic killer, the one whose shadow projects onto his Anima. Norman, played with eerie charm by Anthony Perkins, lives in a dilapidated Gothic house, perched above its basement as a metaphor for psychological repression. His mother, dead and buried in theory, yet haunting every inch of his psyche, has become his alter ego. Not symbolically. Literally. She is a shadow anima, a persona he wears, a judge and executioner lurking behind the familiarity of everyday life.

Toilet and abortive hero

Freud’s concept of das Unheimlich is a German term for “the familiar made frightening.” Hitchcock’s genius makes the everyday known terrifying. Psycho features the first American film scene of a toilet flushing. Judged by rating committees at the time, this was scandalous. Toilets, like shadows, are repositories for the unwanted: body and moral filth. Marion Crane, the heroine killed halfway through the film, seeks to wash away her sin in the infamous shower scene. Instead, she is butchered. The knife is a phallic metaphor, slashing through the purification of sins.

What is truly disturbing is the setting of the scene. Bathrooms are private, vulnerable spaces—we’re naked, unarmed, and rinsing ourselves clean. Hitchcock doesn’t just break that boundary, he stabs right through it. Fear isn’t just felt in the mind; it’s imprinted into the nervous system. That’s why we lock the bathroom door, sing in the shower, and keep our eyes focused on the curtain, decades later, even if we live alone.

Referring to Campbell’s monomyth, Marion’s path begins with promise. She is the reluctant hero who steals money from her boss, crosses the threshold by fleeing Phoenix, and enters the road of trials via rainy highways and a creepy motel. Vogler would call this a narrative subversion. Marion’s hero’s journey is aborted, leaving Norman as the inheritor of the journey. Yet his path is an inverted monomyth: instead of integration, he descends into fragmentation. Shadows don’t stay quiet; they leak, lash out, and sometimes, put on a wig and stab people in the shower. Norman never confronts the shadow; he becomes it as his chakras are blocked.

Shadows don’t stay quiet; they leak, lash out, and sometimes, put on a wig and stab people in the shower

The root of all evil

Eastern philosophy describes chakras as energy centers along the spine; each associated with psychological states and spiritual balance. The root chakra (Muladhara) governs grounding and connection to the maternal. Norman’s root chakra is in absolute disarray. He is untethered, both physically (living alone in a liminal space of his creation) and psychically (possessed by a maternal figure). His sacral chakra, linked to desire and sexuality, is similarly corrupted. His voyeurism indicates a twisted sexual development. Viewed through a Jungian lens, Norman Bates is a man who has refused to integrate his shadow, becoming its puppet. Freud would diagnose him with psychosis and multiple personality disorder, and a Hindu sage might suggest root chakra meditation.

The brilliance of Psycho lies in the layers of story and a Hitchcockian myth it creates. Like Norman’s house, it is a structure of levels: conscious, subconscious, and unconscious. And somewhere, in the creaking attic or a damp basement, our own shadows wait patiently to be seen. Did Hitchcock take one archetype to create a modern collective unconsciousness, or did he simply illuminate the curtain of our own shadows? The next time you watch Psycho, don’t just scream at the shower scene. Ask yourself: what’s hiding in your cellar that makes you terrified of things behind a curtain?

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MythBlast authored by:

Dr. Lejla Panjeta is a Professor of Film Studies and Visual Communication. She was a professor and guest lecturer in many international and Bosnian universities. She also directed and produced in theatre, worked in film production, and authored documentary films. She curated university exhibitions and film projects. She won awards for her artistic and academic works. She is the author and editor of books on film studies, art, and communication. Her recent publication was the bilingual illustrated encyclopedic guide – Filmbook, made for everyone from 8 to 108 years old. Her research interests are in the fields of aesthetics, propaganda, communication, visual arts, cultural and film studies, and mythology. https://independent.academia.edu/LejlaPanjeta

This MythBlast was inspired by The Hero With a Thousand Faces and the archetype of The Shadow.

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