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Characters On The Couch

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

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Leo Hurwitz's Family Influences

LEO HURWITZ
A Pioneer In The Beginnings Of
America’s Documentary Film Part 1
Leo Hurwitz’s Family Influences

October 2, 2017 by Dr. Sandra E. Cohen

Leo Hurwitz (1909 – 1991), a pioneer documentary filmmaker, was part of a small group who founded America’s documentary film. Notably, Leo and his colleagues invented the social documentary form. According to his son, Tom Hurwitz, Leo’s films “exemplified a new way of making films about the real world. And about ideas that help us …

Read moreLEO HURWITZ
A Pioneer In The Beginnings Of
America’s Documentary Film Part 1
Leo Hurwitz’s Family Influences
Mother! Narcissism Yes! Mother Earth? ... I don't think so

MOTHER!
Narcissism? Yes, But, Mother Earth?
… I Don’t Think So.

September 28, 2017 by Dr. Sandra E. Cohen

The environment? Really? Narcissism is more like it. I’m sorry, Darren Aronofsky. Not in a million years would I think Jennifer Lawrence’s character in Mother! is supposed to be Mother Earth, if I hadn’t read an interview with you. But, even so, she isn’t exactly an earthy type of woman. Bountifully giving to everyone and then having …

Read moreMOTHER!
Narcissism? Yes, But, Mother Earth?
… I Don’t Think So.
Wind River Confusing Gap In FBI Agent Jane Banner's Character

WIND RIVER
Confusing Gap in FBI Agent
Jane Banner’s Character

September 14, 2017 by Dr. Sandra E. Cohen

Where does Wind River’s Jane Banner, FBI Agent, (Elizabeth Olson) fit into the mix of marginalized Native Americans and a white Game Tracker (Jeremy Renner) with a significant loss of his own? And, who was she anyway, coming out of nowhere in all her conspicuously dissimilar blonde beauty? We never really know. The film, with …

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Confusing Gap in FBI Agent
Jane Banner’s Character
Demoliton Tearing Down Walls Against Grief

DEMOLITION
Tearing Down Walls
Against Grief

June 30, 2017 by Dr. Sandra E. Cohen

Director Jean-Marc Vallee’s film, Demolition, stars Jake Gyllenhaal as Davis Mitchell, a man who tragically loses his wife in a sudden car accident. If you haven’t seen the film, Demolition is a must-watch to understand the subtleties of this post and, more so, the intricacies of Davis’ reaction. This is a film about a man’s …

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Tearing Down Walls
Against Grief
ELLE Triumph & Perversion Where Does Triumph Come In?

ELLE
Trauma & Perversion
Where Does Triumph Come In?

April 19, 2017 by Dr. Sandra E. Cohen

Trauma. We know it. We experience it. We’re left with its aftermath – when Director Paul Verhoeven’s “noir thriller,” Elle, careens to its conclusion. Leaving the theater, my mind was spinning.  As Verhoeven says, the film has: “an enormous amount of ambiguity, gaps that are in the narrative on purpose for the audience to fill in.” …

Read moreELLE
Trauma & Perversion
Where Does Triumph Come In?
Weiner: What's wrong with Anthony Wiener A Psychoanalyst's Answer

WEINER
What’s Wrong With Anthony Weiner?
A Psychoanalyst’s Answer

July 4, 2016 by Dr. Sandra E. Cohen

The big question in Josh Kreigman and Elyse Steinberg’s documentary Weiner is: “What’s wrong with Anthony Weiner?” Why would a political official destroy his reputation and his career? Why would he humiliate his wife? Lawrence O’Donnell of MSNBC’s Last Word posed this million-dollar question to Weiner on national TV: “What is wrong with you…I mean …

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What’s Wrong With Anthony Weiner?
A Psychoanalyst’s Answer
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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.”

Recent Posts

Everything Everywhere All At Once Breaking Out of Someone Else's Box
Nomadland: A Lonely Nomad in the Land of Loss
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SOUND OF METAL How Silence Stops A Man From Running

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