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Characters On The Couch

How a psychologist thinks about your favorite Film & TV characters.

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Birdman Voices in His Head Truth or Dare Friend or Foe

BIRDMAN
The Voice In His Head
Truth Or Dare, Friend Or Foe?

February 13, 2015 by Dr. Sandra E. Cohen

What do we talk about when we talk about someone losing his grip on reality? When it comes to that question, Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s brilliant film, Birdman, is meaty stuff for a psychoanalyst like me. Riggan Thompson, former action hero, has-been, failed husband and father, is struggling to change his life – against a Voice …

Read moreBIRDMAN
The Voice In His Head
Truth Or Dare, Friend Or Foe?
12 years a slave what makes some people crueler?

12 YEARS A SLAVE
What Makes Some People Crueler?

August 1, 2014 by Dr. Sandra E. Cohen

Some people need someone to hate. In Jean-Paul Sartre’s essay, “Anti-Semite and Jew,” he says: “If the Jew did not exist, the anti-Semite would invent him.” I don’t think it’s a far leap to put the history of Blacks in America in the same category. The important question is why? Why does this need to …

Read more12 YEARS A SLAVE
What Makes Some People Crueler?
her-characters-on-the-couch

HER
Fantasy Relationship 3.0

August 1, 2014 by Dr. Sandra E. Cohen

Spike Jonze is interested in loneliness. His new film, Her, is a semi-futuristic exploration of one lonely man’s struggle to learn what love is and what love is not. Here’s what we know about Theodore Twombly (Joaquin Phoenix). He has a broken heart. His marriage to Catherine has come to a devastatingly sad end. At BeautifulHandwrittenLetters.com, …

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Fantasy Relationship 3.0
NEBRASKA Money or Love? Which is the Real Prize?

NEBRASKA
Money or Love? What’s the Prize?

August 1, 2014 by Dr. Sandra E. Cohen

What does a son do when he feels his dad doesn’t love him? Either silently withdraw or take the road trip of his life to just spend a little time together. Director Alexander Payne has done it brilliantly again. Nebraska isn’t the road trip we took in Sideways. It’s a father-son road trip, and a touchingly redemptive ride …

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Money or Love? What’s the Prize?
PHILOMENA Triumph over Shame

PHILOMENA
Triumph Over Shame

August 1, 2014 by Dr. Sandra E. Cohen

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 …

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Triumph Over Shame
American Hustle Poisonous Choices to Survive

AMERICAN HUSTLE
Do You Have to Make a Poisonous Choice to Survive?

July 31, 2014 by Dr. Sandra E. Cohen

David O. Russell’s American Hustle is a cinematic treatise on the complexities of survival. Irving Rosenfeld, Sydney Prosser (AKA Lady Edith Greensley), Richie DiMaso, and Rosalyn Rosenfeld are each, in their own uniquely perverse and destructive ways, just trying to survive. But, are they? If we remove ourselves from the intrigue of the hustle itself (based upon the …

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Do You Have to Make a Poisonous Choice to Survive?
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Inspiration

“We come to Film and TV to find our hidden stories. If we look deeply into a character’s psyche, there is much to see about ourselves.”

Recent Posts

The Power of the Dog Why Phil Burbank’s Cruelty is About What He Hates in Himself
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