My general argument is that a psychoanalytical reading of Hitchcock's motifs helps reveal the resonances, undercurrents and associations. In a number of examples, the motif is sexualised: ENTRY THROUGH A WINDOW, EXHIBITIONISM / VOYEURISM / THE LOOK, HANDCUFFS AND BONDAGE, KEYS AND HANDBAGS. One could even say the same of THE MACGUFFIN: when it is an object, it frequently hints at a sexual meaning. The sexualisation of (elements of) Hitchcock's cinema is well-known, but it almost always has a disturbing edge or forbidden undercurrents to it. On the one hand, this is a reflection of the general sense in Hitchcock that sex is fraught with difficulties, or displaced into other actions (notoriously, violence); on the other, the coding necessary to ‘smuggle in’ a sexual subtext allows the director to allude to areas which would otherwise be impossible because of censorship considerations.

The sense that Hitchcock's films, like dreams, deal (in Wollen's phrase) in ‘the rhetoric of the unconscious’ is also relevant to those motifs which touch on the unconscious and the repressed: DOUBLES, LIGHT(S), WATER AND RAIN. Other sites for ‘the return of the repressed’ include BED SCENES and Bathrooms (under CONFINED SPACES). ‘The repressed’ in these examples relates both to the individual characters – e.g. the sense that the double is enacting the unconscious wishes of the protagonist – and to the culture generally: e.g. the notion that the chaos world lies just underneath the surface of the everyday world. PUBLIC DISTURBANCES are another sort of example. They function in a social sense like the return of the suppressed: the veneer of politeness and decorum cracks, and chaos ensues.

One motif in particular – THE CORPSE – frequently marks the entrance of a protagonist into the chaos world. HEIGHTS AND FALLING often suggest the sense of the abyss: another metaphor for the chaos world. Other motifs which are linked to the dangers of the chaos world include STAIRCASES (which regularly lead to a ‘sinister domain’), VOYEURISM (looking into the chaos world) and houses with hostile mothers or mother figures in them (➢ MOTHERS AND HOUSES). TRAINS are used to condense the chaos world into a specific set of threats, such as murder attempts, or the dangers of espionage activities. BOATS are frequently associated with physical distress: sickness, deprivation, the threat of being drowned.