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How a psychologist thinks about your favorite

Film & TV characters.

Welcome to Characters On The Couch, my Film & Television site, where I delve into character psychology and character development. If you’re just plain interested in psychology and film or are a writer, actor, or director, I bring you my insights into your favorite contemporary and classic characters. By doing so, I hope to help you understand their deeper (and deepest) psychological motivations.

When you think about truly iconic films, what is it that gives them such staying power? Is it the time of your life when you watched it? Could it be that one or more characters aligned with your own deepest struggles or painful experiences? Is it the costumes or images that seemed unforgettable? Or maybe, it’s simply that it pulled at your heart and caused you to explore emotions in a new and profound way?

I say it’s all of it. And, equally, when these meaningful elements are missing, a story becomes, well, forgettable. This is what I hope this site will encourage you to do. To transform your story, personal or in writing, into magic by finding the human thread that links it and you to a universal experience.

Everything in life ties back to complex emotions as well as the rhythm and language of feelings and psychology. On my blog and in what I’ve written in Psychology & Story, are thoughts I hope will help.

For more than 40 years as a psychoanalyst, I have listened to my patients tell their stories and I find words that speak to what is going on deep inside them. The heart of good character development, too, is in the character’s psychology. Using movies and their characters, I’ll talk about a character’s deepest motivations, agonies, and breakthroughs to apply to your movie-watching, writing, or yourself.

THE GREEN BOOK
What Do 2 Unlikely Travel Companions Teach Each Other
About Life & Friendship & Love?

Peter Farrelly’s The Green Book poses a challenging question: what do 2 unlikely road companions possibly have to teach each other? A lot … even about friendship and love. But, with all their obvious differences, it’s an emotionally rocky road trip to get there. One of the 2 is Dr. Donald Shirley, a classically trained…

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THE FAVOURITE
How Envy Plays Its Part
In Sexual Favors To A Queen?

The historical jury is out as to whether Queen Anne of England (1702 -1714) and her two ladies were actual lovers. Yet, sex makes for a good story; and sex wields power – in both what it has to offer and withhold. Envy, though, is the real name of the sexual game at the center…

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LEAVE NO TRACE
What Happens When Trust
Is Shattered?

Debra Granik’s Leave No Trace is a story about trauma and distrust. That might not be the most obvious thing in this compelling film about a Vietnam Vet and his 13-year-old daughter who live in hiding in a park forest outside Portland, Oregon. But for me, as a psychoanalyst, it is the film’s heart. Will…

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