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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.

NEVER RARELY
SOMETIMES ALWAYS
Secret World Of Sexual Abuse

Watching Autumn’s cautious troubled face in the quietness of Never Rarely Sometimes Always draws us into the dark shattered life of a traumatized girl. If she’d let us in. Autumn lives behind walls. Alone. Vigilant. Angry. Always afraid. Can’t allow help: “I’ve got it.” People aren’t to be trusted. That she’s learned. If you think…

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SHE DIES TOMORROW
What Makes This Conviction Unshakable?
The Real Culprit Is Loss

“I’m Ok. I’m Not Ok. It Just Is” (Is it?) You try to reassure yourself, but you can’t. Then you try to accept it. Whatever it is. In Amy Seimetz’s She Dies Tomorrow, that it is death. But, why tomorrow? Why is Amy’s (the character’s) conviction so unshakable? And contagious? Sure, we have the pandemic…

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STAND BY ME
Friendship Matters
In Grief, Loneliness & COVID-19

We all need friends. Like Gordie and Chris in Rob Reiner‘s 1986 film classic Stand by Me. Especially now. When the new fears of COVID-19 layer on top of old traumas, worries, and sadness – and can make them prey upon you like the gang of teenage bullies in the film. Won’t leave you alone.…

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