The episode Normal Again (6.17) is one of the most uncanny ones within the BtVS text: Buffy Summers finds herself in a psychiatric institution and is told that the last six years, which she had experienced as a superhero-like slayer of vampires, had been nothing more than a delusion caused by schizophrenia. Buffy loses orientation and so does the audience. But what is so spooky about Normal Again?

For my final Masters paper I have taken the diagnosis of Buffy’s doctor seriously and have looked at the parallels between paranoid schizophrenia in regard to the structure of the “illness” as well as delusional content (from a Lacanian/psychoanalytical point of view) on one hand, and a narrative technique I call psychotic narration on the other. Psychotic Narration is especially present in movies of the late 1990s such as Matrix (Andy&Larry Wachowski, 1999) or Dark City (Alex Proyas, 1998), but is also at work throughout the whole BtVS series.

In BtVS classical delusional themes such as grandeur (Slayer), conspiracy (Initiative, Watchers Council), fragmentation of bodies (Adam), control from the outside (Spike’s brainchip, soul-swapping and vampire-siring) etc. constitute the mythology of the series. But there are also parallels between the BtVS mythology and the Lacanian psychosis model in regard of dysfunctional affect-economy, use of language and other symptoms of schizophrenia. 

In my presentation, after introducing the concept of psychotic narration, I want to show how Normal Again self-referentially contrasts the “psychotic” (post/ex-oedipal) scenario of the Buffyverse with the “normal” (oedipal) world of the clinic. Further I will look at the role the institution of the clinic plays in forcing an oedipal economy onto Buffy and how the TV-viewer is involved with the whole experience.