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How a psychologist thinks about your favorite

Film & TV characters.

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Welcome to Characters On The Couch, my Film & Television site, where I delve into character psychology. If you’re interested in psychology, film, or a combination of the two, I bring my insights into your favorite contemporary and classic characters. I hope to help you understand their deeper psychological motivations (and, maybe, even your own).

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

I say it’s all of the above. And, in the same way, when these meaningful elements are missing, a story becomes forgettable. I hope this site will encourage you 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 us back to complex emotions and the rhythm and language of feelings and psychology. I'll offer your that language of feeling in my blog as I write about the human struggles in each film.

LADY BIRD
Mothers & Daughters
How History Plays Its Part
In Problems Loving and Letting Go

and Lady Bird begins with a Joan Didion quote splashed across the screen: “Anyone who talks about California hedonism has never spent Christmas in Sacramento.” Christmas is mostly for children or, at least, the child part of us. And, few come through childhood unscathed. Greta Gerwig’s charming, brilliantly written, funny, and psychologically real film has…

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LEO HURWITZ
DIALOGUE WITH A WOMAN DEPARTED 1972-1980
A Poem Of Love To A Wife
Who Lived In Protest Against Hate

Shoot Film, Not People: this is the poster filmmaker Peggy Lawson, Leo Hurwitz’s wife, carried during a march against the Vietnam War. As we watch Dialogue With A Woman Departed, (Watch Film) Leo’s 4-hour love poem to Peggy, we come back to this sign again and again. Again and again, we come back to Peggy:…

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LEO HURWITZ
THOUGHTS ON THE MAKING OF
DISCOVERY IN A PAINTING
A film by Leo Hurwitz &Manfred Kirchheimer

This Piece Is Written By Manfred Kirchheimer Featured in Photo Below Manfred Kirchheimer’s thoughts on the Making of Discovery in a Painting with Leo Hurwitz: In 1968 Leo Hurwitz and Manfred Kirchheimer filmed an early version of Cezanne’s Still Life with Apples, to be called Journey into a Painting at the Museum of Modern Art…

Read More about LEO HURWITZ THOUGHTS ON THE MAKING OF DISCOVERY IN A PAINTING A film by Leo Hurwitz &Manfred Kirchheimer