Characters On The Couch

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

Film

LEO HURWITZ’S PSYCHOANALYST SISTERS
Marie H. Briehl and Rosetta Hurwitz
Pioneers in Child Psychoanalysis  

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Leo Hurwitz was a pioneer in the development of the documentary film in America, but he wasn’t the only pioneer in the Hurwitz family. His older sisters Rosetta (Rose) and Marie were pioneers in bringing child psychoanalysis to the United States. They were among the first child analysts to train with Anna Freud in Vienna …

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Marie H. Briehl and Rosetta Hurwitz
Pioneers in Child Psychoanalysis  

THE BIG SICK
If You Can’t Break Old Rules
It Can Make You Sick

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The Big Sick, Emily V. Gordon, and Kumail Nanjiani’s touching, sad, scary, and deeply heart-warming romantic comedy tells us a lot about those old rules you live by. They’re not so easy to break. They turn into “should-s,” carry terrible guilt; they make you scared. And, along with all that, they confuse you. Particularly when …

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If You Can’t Break Old Rules
It Can Make You Sick

LEO HURWITZ
A Pioneer In The Beginnings Of America’s Documentary Film Part 3
A Radical Filmmaker In The Making

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 “Leo Hurwitz’s task in life: creating and practicing the documentary film tied intrinsically to the quest for human freedom, liberation, equality, and truth.” Tom Hurwitz, Leo’s son. In 1926, Leo went to Harvard. This was quite an achievement for the Jewish son of working-class immigrants. Yet remarkably in line with the family’s intrinsic belief in, equality. …

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A Pioneer In The Beginnings Of America’s Documentary Film Part 3
A Radical Filmmaker In The Making

BABY DRIVER
Want to Change?
Then Stop Running From the Past

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Baby (Ansel Elgort) wants to change, but … stop running? That’s easier said than done. Especially if you’re a sweet, loving, sensitive kid (that’s Baby in Edgar Wright’s Baby Driver), whose cruel dad is responsible for your mom dying as you sit helplessly watching. What do you do with those terrifying memories? You grow up …

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Want to Change?
Then Stop Running From the Past

LEO HURWITZ
A Pioneer In The Beginnings Of America’s Documentary Film Part 2
Childhood Memories & Fantasies

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Memories and fantasies originating in childhood influence the course of a life as it unfolds. So do childhood experiences. That was true of Leo Hurwitz and his films. Leo’s strong creative spirit enabled these impressionable early times to find powerful forms of expression in his creative work. And, because of this, Leo’s films speak for …

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A Pioneer In The Beginnings Of America’s Documentary Film Part 2
Childhood Memories & Fantasies

STRONGER
Flashbacks & Triggers
Remembering Jeff Bauman’s PTSD

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PTSD always follows trauma. No traumatized person is “strong” enough to escape it. Yet, for complicated reasons, Post Traumatic Stress symptoms are too frequently off everyone’s radar, particularly the radar of the one suffering. The reasons are both straight out of the DSM-V and very individual. Jeff Bauman’s story in David Gordon Green’s powerful new film, Stronger, with Jake Gyllenhaal’s deeply moving performance as Jeff and Tatiana Maslany’s complex and engagingly real portrayal of his girlfriend, Erin Hurley, is a good place to start understanding what happens after trauma.

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Flashbacks & Triggers
Remembering Jeff Bauman’s PTSD