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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.

GIRLS
OCD # 1 Hannah’s Counting
Why The Number 8?

This is the first in a series of 4 Posts. What’s in Girls & Hannah’s OCD? The word OCD is tossed around too casually in our contemporary culture – as in “I’m so OCD” to mean “I’m a perfectionist.” Or “I like to have things organized and controlled.” Sure, those things can be true of people who…

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MAD MEN Season 7 Episode 11
Will More Losses
Mean A Setback for Don?

Right when it seems life is moving along for Don in a more optimistic way, Mad Men Season 7 Episode 11 Time and Life comes along. McCann-Erickson plays a manipulative trick, absorbing Sterling Cooper & Partners. The agency’s identity is now gone. Does it take away Don’s as well? Don says to Roger: “What’s in…

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IMMEDIATE FAMILY
The Way Things Are
“Supposed To Be,” But Aren’t

Paul Oakley Stovall’s Immediate Family, directed by Phylicia Rashad, is now playing at the Mark Taper Forum. Don’t miss this sensitive, very funny, and oh-so-real depiction of a family coming to grips with things not going as expected. And, even more importantly, the people they love not being who they thought they were. They fight…

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