Characters on the Couch
Film & Television Blog
by Dr. Sandra Cohen
MAD MEN Season 7 Preview
Don Draper’s Shame
The Toll of Living a Lie
Don Draper (Jon Hamm) has been running from his past through the last six seasons of Mad Men. At least, he’s tried his best – amidst flashbacks and his brother’s return. To me as a psychoanalyst, there’s no doubt he’s a traumatized man. A man using various methods, mostly affairs, and alcohol, to convince himself it’s…
12 YEARS A SLAVE
What Makes Some People Crueler?
Some people need someone to hate. In Jean-Paul Sartre’s essay, “Anti-Semite and Jew,” he says: “If the Jew did not exist, the anti-Semite would invent him.” I don’t think it’s a far leap to put the history of Blacks in America in the same category. The important question is why? Why does this need to…
HER
Fantasy Relationship 3.0
Spike Jonze is interested in loneliness. His new film, Her, is a semi-futuristic exploration of one lonely man’s struggle to learn what love is and what love is not. Here’s what we know about Theodore Twombly (Joaquin Phoenix). He has a broken heart. His marriage to Catherine has come to a devastatingly sad end. At BeautifulHandwrittenLetters.com,…
