Characters On The Couch

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

cold mothers

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

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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 1957)
Cold Mother Stops Emotional Time
& Sentences A Boy To Loneliness

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“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