Characters on the Couch
Film & Television Blog
by Dr. Sandra 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…
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…
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…
