| المستخلص: |
Murder methods form a complex field of study. Strangling, shooting, poisoning, stabbing, burning, bludgeoning, and asphyxiation are the principal causes of death, particularly in cases of serial murder. Once a serial offender employs a murder method/weapon that works, he seldom changes it. Nonetheless, this does not appear to be the case in one of popular culture's most famous novels of horror—Psycho (1959), where serial killer Norman Bates employs two murder methods: poisoning and stabbing respectively. Norman poisons his mother with Strychnine, a murder method associated with the female offender, and then with his younger female victim[s], employs what crime experts call "picquerism," which is physical gratification gained by stabbing, slashing, cutting, or slicing of another person. Previous criticisms of the novel have paid little attention to the murder methods employed by Norman centring instead on the obvious, namely, transvestitism, gender relations, mother fixation, psychoanalytic concerns, Oedipal fixation, incest, psychosis, the Gothic tradition, and so on and so forth. This study examines the patterns of serial homicide committed by Norman Bates in terms of murder methods. The study will prove that Bloch's fictional murderer matures psychosexually through murder. The matricide and later homicides allow him to progresses rather than regresses hence the change in murder methods. The aim of the study is to provide rationale and evidence to support the validity of this theory. As a result a psychological and criminological reading of Bloch's novel will be employed since both approaches lend themselves readily to this type of examination. Furthermore, both approaches complement one another in cases of serial murder. Bloch's novel refers to a variety of topics of psychological and criminological interest, particularly those of attitudes, motives, and emotions. The goal of this study is primarily to support the validity of an empirical study of literature, hopefully resulting in a furthering of an interchange between science and the humanities.
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