Perhaps the most dramatic theme is the mother as the son’s first, and therefore unassailable, love. Every subsequent woman must be measured against her. In classical culture, this was idealized (Hector and Andromache, with Hecuba looking on). In modern tragedy, it is pathological (Norman Bates murdering Marion Crane because “Mother” is jealous). Philip Roth’s Portnoy’s Complaint is the comic masterpiece of this theme: Alexander Portnoy masturbates into a piece of liver that is about to be served to his family, screaming, “Now you’ve got liver, Mother!” It is a shriek of rebellion against the kosher, guilt-inducing, all-encompassing Jewish mother. The lover is never just a lover; she is a battlefield where the mother-son war continues.

The mother-son relationship is a complex and multifaceted theme that has been explored in various forms of art, including cinema and literature. Through the portrayal of this relationship, artists can gain insight into the human condition, revealing the ways in which our bonds with others shape our identities, desires, and experiences. By examining the mother-son relationship in cinema and literature, we can gain a deeper understanding of the psychological, social, and cultural forces that shape our lives.

The depiction of mothers and sons often revolves around established psychological and literary archetypes:

Alfred Hitchcock arguably did more to embed the "monstrous mother" into the cinematic psyche than any other director. In Psycho , Norman Bates’s mother is a disembodied voice, a judgmental superego that drives him to madness. While the film feeds into the trope of the smothering mother ruining her son, it also visualizes the terrifying lack of separation—the son who cannot exorcise the mother’s voice from his head.

: Explores the lingering power of a mother (Addie Bundren) over her sons even after her death.