Posts by Dr. Sandra E. Cohen
ROOM
How Does Therapy Find Words
For Wordless Trauma?
Director Lenny Abrahamson and writer Emma Donoghue’s film, ROOM, takes us directly into the emotional experience of trauma. As the film opens, we hear a little boy’s voice introducing us to a girl named Ma. Kidnapped, stolen from her life, and kept in ROOM for seven years, Ma lives in a world as incomprehensible as Alice’s…
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THE BIG SHORT
Danger Of Living In Bubbles
& Fooling Ourselves
The Big Short, directed by Adam McKay, starring Christian Bale, Ryan Gosling, Steve Carell, and Brad Pitt, tells more than the story of the U.S. housing bubble from 2001 to 2005. More than the story of risky advantages taken by mortgage companies, hedge funds, and investment bankers to profit from it. I’m a psychoanalyst, not an…
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SPOTLIGHT
Breaking The Cult Of Secrecy
Surrounding Sexual Abuse
“If it takes a village to raise a child, it takes a village to abuse one” M. Garabedian Secrets are damaging. The film, Spotlight, directed by Tom McCarthy, tells the story of one very pernicious secret uncovered by an investigative team, named Spotlight, at the Boston Globe. That secret, the widespread sexual abuse by Catholic…
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THE REVENANT
Humanizing Revenge
As much as I loved Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Birdman, I can’t say I felt the same about The Revenant. I know the film won big at the Golden Globes and has received Oscar nods for Best Picture and Best Actor. Perhaps that’s because a fantasy lives deep inside us about exacting revenge where we believe revenge…
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THE DANISH GIRL
Barren Trees & A Divided Self
Director Tom Hopper’s beautifully conceived film, The Danish Girl, begins and ends with artist Einar Wegener’s paintings of barren trees. The barrenness in these trees tells volumes about the lonely depletion of a self when the real self is split off and hidden. Artist Einar Wegener’s courageous transition from male to female, together with Eddie…
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TRUMBO & The Dynamics Of Fear
It’s Ravages, Ruins, & Undoing
“Now the truth of the matter is that there are a lot of things people don’t understand. Take the Einstein theory. Taxes. Love. Do you understand them? Neither do I. But they exist. They happen.” – Dalton Trumbo Dalton Trumbo is right. Things we don’t understand do happen. And, some things we don’t understand invoke…
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