
Characters on the Couch
Film & Television Blog
by Dr. Sandra Cohen
A REAL PAIN: To Numb or Not to Numb?
Numbing pain is not a conscious choice. It’s a common survival strategy, a self-protection from emotional overwhelm, during and after trauma. And, it is often passed down for generations. Take cousins Benji and Dave, for example, in Jesse Eisenberg’s film, A Real Pain. They both struggle with their feelings in very different ways, revealed in…
BLUE VELVET: Why Desire Goes Wrong
David Lynch’s troubling and sexually violent 1986 film Blue Velvet reveals the corruption and dark impulses under what seems to be a white picket fence kind of purity and innocence. In Lynch’s signature style, this jolting movie strips bare the confusing urges and compulsions people live with related to desire, need, and what is or…