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Characters On The Couch

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

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cold mothers

becoming astrid Lonely Girl's superhuman strength & Pippi Longstocking's too

BECOMING ASTRID
Lonely Girl’s Superhuman Strength
& Pippi Longstocking Too

April 24, 2019 by Dr. Sandra E. Cohen

Astrid Lindgren, the author of the inimitable Pippi Longstocking, knew all about superhuman strength. She had it as a young girl. At least, she had to believe she did. To get through a traumatic pregnancy and separation from her baby. “You can do it.” That’s what people told young Astrid over and over when she …

Read moreBECOMING ASTRID
Lonely Girl’s Superhuman Strength
& Pippi Longstocking Too
Wild Strawberries, Ingmar Bergman, Cold Mother and a Sentence To A Lonely Life

WILD STRAWBERRIES
(Ingmar Bergman 1957)
Cold Mother Stops Emotional Time
& Sentences A Boy To Loneliness

March 18, 2019 by Dr. Sandra E. Cohen

“One sleeps in one’s childhood’s shoes,” Bergman remembers Swedish poet Maria Wine, saying, and “that was the real starting point of Wild Strawberries.” (p. 212*) It’s true. And, some live inside the echoes of a cold mother. Every psychoanalyst knows how our childhoods slumber within each waking and dreaming moment of our lives, creating their …

Read moreWILD STRAWBERRIES
(Ingmar Bergman 1957)
Cold Mother Stops Emotional Time
& Sentences A Boy To Loneliness

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.”

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