Psycho/Psychose

(Psychosis)

Psycho reminds me of an episode of the Simpsons... Starts with a story, then something happens, and the whole thing takes a completely different direction... 

It starts as a thriller. Girl likes boy, boy can't get married for some reason I can't remember right now, girl steals money from her boss, girl runs (drives) away and stops in a dodgy motel for the night. Girl meets Norman Bates, a very shy and polite young man. Girl gets killed in the shower in one of the best scenes ever shot. Boy and sister come looking for girl, to discover than said Norman Bates is a bit of a crazy guy. And why is his mum sitting at the window all the time? 

I LOVE it. It scares me shitless everytime I watch it. Admitedly, I have not watched it in a while and was planning on buying the DVD when I came across this article. Good thing it's coming out in the cinema again... Though I doubt youngsters would enjoy watching a black and white film, but you never know :)

I was going to slag Gus Van Sant's remake off as most people did when it came out, but I can't. I actually liked it. Of course it doesn't compare to the original but it has Viggo Mortensen in it... So I can't... Because, yeah, I like the Viggo.

Psycho, as I understand it, means a crazy person, in general and saying that "He's an absolute psycho" means that he's a potentially violent person too.

It's a short for psychotic, a person suffering from psychosis which has the Wiki definition of "abnormal condition of the mind, and a generic psychiatric term for a mental state often described as involving a "loss of contact with reality".

Psychotic translates to psychotique. (Easy one)

Psychose, the French title, translates back to psychosis and this means that the centre of attention is no longer a character (a psychotic or someone who has psychosis) to the general condition, dilluting the feeling that someone in this film isn't quite right (but who is it?).

I am not sure that this was the case back in 1960, when the film came out, but nowadays, "psychose" in French means generally fear or paranoia. It is an acceptable synonym for panic. The term was heard an awful lot during *cough* the so called swine flu pandemic. What's worse than psychose? Une grosse psychose, of course! That's like level 10 of the fear scale, or something.

In that context, it barely has any psychiatric connotations, just the one of fear and panic, which could be what one feels when watching the film, who knows?

(I definitely want one of these)