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. 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.
PHILOMENA
Triumph Over Shame
And the children in the apple-tree Not known, because not looked for But heard, half-heard, in the stillness … (T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets) Shame ravages. It eats away at you. It makes you collapse into yourself and live with secrets – seemingly too shameful to tell. Philomena Lee’s (Judi Dench) story is the story of…
GRAVITY
Grave Losses: Fight or Flight?
Life In Space Is Impossible What kind of beautiful and terrifying space does Gravity tell us about? The vast reaches of outer space, to be sure. Alfonso Cuaron’s film, Gravity, is a cinematographically beautiful cliffhanger of a space odyssey. Yet, there is a compelling psychological subtext: the gravity of Dr. Ryan Stone’s unresolved grief. What…
THE WOLF OF WALL STREET
No Friends In A World Of Greed
Martin Scorsese’s The Wolf Of Wall Street is an indulgently voyeuristic picture of MORE, MORE, MORE, (we call it Greed), at every level. Money, sex, drugs – there’s no stopping the film’s main characters, Jordan Belfort (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his cohorts, from their purely hedonistic pursuits. And, yet, that’s still not enough. Is Martin Scorsese…
