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Characters On The Couch

How a psychologist thinks about your favorite Film & TV characters.

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Love Actually What Does It Take To Get Through Love's Obstacles & Keep Hope Alive

LOVE ACTUALLY
What Does It Take To
Get Through Love’s Obstacles
& Keep Hope Alive?

December 30, 2020 by Dr. Sandra E. Cohen

Richard Curtis’ 2003 film classic, Love Actually, is the ultimate Christmas ROM-COM. After all, the Christmas holiday-time is the season of love, romance, and family. But, what if you couldn’t be with family because of the pandemic? Or love isn’t working very well with the stresses of quarantine? Or maybe you’ve run into love’s inevitable …

Read moreLOVE ACTUALLY
What Does It Take To
Get Through Love’s Obstacles
& Keep Hope Alive?
6 Mistakes a Woman Makes In Falling for A Narcissistic Bad Boy & Getting Wise

A FACE IN THE CROWD
6 “Mistakes” A Woman Makes
Falling for A Narcissistic Bad Boy

December 16, 2020 by Dr. Sandra E. Cohen

Lonesome Rhodes, a brashly-charming-drunken-drifter, is turned radio personality by Marcia Jeffries in Elia Kazan’s 1957 film, A Face in The Crowd. The film explores the climb to power of a rabble-rousing anti-social con man, as well as Lonesome’s ultimate tantruming downfall. Sound familiar? But perhaps the real question lies in why a woman like Marcia …

Read moreA FACE IN THE CROWD
6 “Mistakes” A Woman Makes
Falling for A Narcissistic Bad Boy
My Octopus Teacher Why Healing Means Returning to The Same Place Over & Over

MY OCTOPUS TEACHER
Why Healing Means
Returning To The Same Place
Over & Over

November 18, 2020 by Dr. Sandra E. Cohen

Why return to the same place over and over? It’s healing. How? Craig Foster says it best in his moving, life-altering, love-story, My Octopus Teacher: “That’s when you see the subtle differences. That’s when you get to know the wild.” It’s true, too, of going through a wildly tumultuous emotional time, not so different than …

Read moreMY OCTOPUS TEACHER
Why Healing Means
Returning To The Same Place
Over & Over
GET OUT Trauma Never Again Getting Out

GET OUT
Trauma #Never Again
& “Getting Out”

November 2, 2020 by Dr. Sandra E. Cohen

Jordan Peele’s brilliantly conceived film, Get Out, does its job of shattering the myth that we’re living in a post-racial America. My great uncle, Leo Hurwitz’s film, Strange Victory, did the same in 1948 after we won the war against Hitler but came home to racism here. It’s now 72 years later and there’s still …

Read moreGET OUT
Trauma #Never Again
& “Getting Out”

HOME FOR THE HOLIDAYS
Family, Old Sibling Warfare, & Love

October 27, 2020 by Dr. Sandra E. Cohen

Holidays are getting close and they’re complicated enough without COVID-19. Now you have to think twice (or, at least for different reasons) whether you can risk going Home for The Holidays. The usual question is: Do you want to go home to family, with all the quirks, neuroses, and old sibling warfare that Jodie Foster’s …

Read moreHOME FOR THE HOLIDAYS
Family, Old Sibling Warfare, & Love
The Manchurian Candidate (1962) How A Narcissistic Mother Takes Over & Destroys A Child's Soul

THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE (1962)
A Narcissistic Mother Takes Over
& Destroys A Child’s Soul

September 23, 2020 by Dr. Sandra E. Cohen

A narcissistic mother uses her children. She controls them, starves them of love. In John Frankenheimer’s The Manchurian Candidate (1962), that’s Eleanor Shaw Iselin, Mother of lead character Raymond Shaw. Raymond is deeply convinced: “I’m not lovable.” No wonder he has enough hate to be brainwashed to kill. “Yes, Mother,” “Yes, Ma’am, and “Yes, Sir” govern …

Read moreTHE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE (1962)
A Narcissistic Mother Takes Over
& Destroys A Child’s Soul
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Inspiration

“We come to Film and TV to find our hidden stories. If we look deeply into a character’s psyche, there is much to see about ourselves.”

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