In D.H. Lawrence's "Sons and Lovers," Gertrude Morel turns to her sons for the emotional fulfillment her marriage lacks, creating a "suffocating" bond that hinders their ability to love others.

Lena nodded, feeling a familiar sense of frustration. She longed to connect with her son, to understand what was going on in his life. But every conversation seemed to feel like a struggle.

This archetype finds its most chilling cinematic expression in Alfred Hitchcock’s (1960). Norman Bates is not merely a killer; he is a son preserved in amber. His dead mother’s voice, both literal and psychological, dominates him so completely that he has forfeited his own identity. The famous scene of the stuffed bird in the parlor is the film’s metaphor: Norman, too, has been stuffed and mounted by a mother who could not let go. Here, the bond is a horror story about arrested development—a son frozen in perpetual boyhood, obeying a maternal command long after the source has turned to dust.