Abstract
Themes connected with mental illness and psychiatry frequently feature in the works of Alfred Hitchcock. Some critics believe it is a reflection of the director’s own mental health issues. Yet, it is more likely that Hitchcock was inspired by the Gothic tradition and the legacy of Edgar Allan Poe as well as the popularity of psychoanalysis in post war U.S. culture. This article looks at Hitchcock’s feature-length films in order to analyse the representation of psychopathic characters as perpetrators of crime and the disturbed mother–child relationships which may lead to mental aberrations. Furthermore, it presents the ways in which Hitchcock subtly undermines popular conceptions about the relationship between mental illness and crime, and the role of psychiatry in explaining unusual behaviour.
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Notes
See also Marlisa Santos’ The Dark Mirror. Psychiatry and Film Noir (2011).
The narrator of Poe’s “The Black Cat” takes the police to the cellar where he buried his murdered wife’s body, under an excuse to show them the craftsmanship of the building’s fundaments – his hubris betrays him since his tapping on the wall causes the cat, buried alive, to shriek.
His self-assuredness resembles the no-nonsense attitude of the lady ornithologists in The Birds. They are both convinced of the authority of science and dismissive of the opinions of the mob. Yet, the psychiatrist might be as wrong as the ornithologist is.
Spellbound opens with an eulogy of psychoanalysis and professional analysts (May Romm) were employed to help with the script. It was also criticised by psychiatrists, notably Karl Menninger, for simplifications and distortions (Halliwell 2014. 68).
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Szmigiero, K. “We All Go a Little Mad Sometimes:” Representations of Insanity in the Films of Alfred Hitchcock. Cult Med Psychiatry 47, 152–175 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11013-022-09789-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11013-022-09789-y