MBTI Type: ISFJ

Norman has grown quite settled in his life, and balks at any notion of change; when questioned about whether he would pull up stakes and start up a motel somewhere else, he refuses to talk about it. Norman cannot imagine any life other than the one he has happily settled into, doing the same things habitually every day despite having very few visitors (replacing the sheets, tending his “mother,” turning on the sign). He is patient, attentive to the small details of running a motel, and meticulous in how he cleans up the bathroom after the crime, noticing the smallest things in the room that could make him a suspect and getting rid of them, from blood spots on the tiles to a newspaper on the side table. “I think we all go a little crazy sometimes,” he says. Norman is warm, personable, and likable. He seems harmless, interested in Marion, and accommodating. He often defers to his mother’s wishes and tries to please her through placating and other compassionate appeals. But he mostly focuses on fulfilling her needs, wishes, and feelings, and sidelining his own. He becomes increasingly more emotional in being questioned, delayed, and interrogated, showing the cracks in his own “cool” resolve. His Ti is good at problem-solving; Norman quickly figures out how best to cover his mother’s tracks and prevent suspicion from falling on them due to missing something in the room. It takes common sense to toss a body in a trunk and submerge the car in a swamp. He shows very little inferior Ne, except in his anxiety about needing to cover all his bases, so nothing goes wrong.

Enneagram: 9w1 sx/so

Though Norman has a host of personality disorders, it’s true that he is passive, compliant, and largely asleep to his own needs. As a boy, he “merged” (the 9’s focus) so completely with his mother that he became obsessively jealous of her boyfriends. As an adult, he is still deferring to all her wishes and needs, as if she is controlling him, despite her… um, absence. Like most 9s, he loathes change, he becomes “fused” in what he is used to doing (running the motel), and gets visibly anxious and reactive under stress (moving toward 6 disintegration). His 1 wing is strong. Norman experiences sexual feelings for women that seem like a betrayal of his affection for his mother, so he punishes them (and himself, through self-hatred and moralizing) relentlessly. He tries to repress his sexual instincts. He talks about doing his “duty” by his mother, and being responsible for her, and gets offended at the idea of putting her in a nursing home.