How a Psychologist Helps You Understand Trauma Through Film & tV Characters
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.
LOVE AND MERCY
4 Signs Of A Bad Therapist
& How You Could Get Hooked
Take a musical genius and sensitive boy. Say that boy hears musical notes and whole ensembles in his head. Add a jealous and demeaning father. What’s the result? Critical voices in that boy’s head fighting with the songs and the self that are trying to come alive. Mix in drugs and alcohol to shut those…
OBAMA’S EULOGY
FOR REVEREND PINCKNEY
A Way To Solve Hate
I’ve been thinking about something President Obama said in his heartfelt eulogy for the Honorable Reverend Clementa Pinckney at the AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina on June 26, 2015. If we, as a nation, can do what he suggests, we just might put another piece in the puzzle of solving hate’s violence. Yes, Barack…
WAYWARD PINES
If You’re Lied To & Controlled
Paranoia Is Reasonable
No one in Wayward Pines has any independence at all. And, ironically, it happens to be Independence Day. Yet, what do you do with that? Be paranoid? Maybe. Because when you’re being controlled, it makes sense to be paranoid. Especially in Wayward Pines, where you live in a world made up of lies, secrets, and…
