• Skip to main content
  • Skip to header right navigation
  • Skip to site footer
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
  • Mail

Characters On The Couch

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

  • Home
  • Blog
  • About Sandra E. Cohen, PhD
  • Entertainment Consulting
  • Psychology & Story
  • Leo Hurwitz’s Documentaries
  • Contact

despair

She Dies Tomorrow What Makes This Conviction Unshakable? The Real Culprit Is Loss

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

August 12, 2020 by Dr. Sandra E. Cohen

“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 …

Read moreSHE DIES TOMORROW
What Makes This Conviction Unshakable?
The Real Culprit Is Loss
Winter Light Ingmar Bergman 1963 A Man Who Cannot Need Cannot Love

WINTER LIGHT
Ingmar Bergman (1963)
A Man Who Need Cannot Love

June 6, 2019 by Dr. Sandra E. Cohen

Reverend Tomas Ericsson is a man who cannot need. And, because he can’t, he struggles with both God and love. Tomas over and over coldly rejects his desperately loving former lover, Marta. Ingmar Bergman’s Winter Light 1963, slowly reveals the source of his loss of faith. Tomas loved his dead wife: “When she died, so …

Read moreWINTER LIGHT
Ingmar Bergman (1963)
A Man Who Need Cannot Love
If Beale Street Could Talk - I Got You Kind Of Love

IF BEALE STREET COULD TALK
That “I Got You” Kind Of Love
The Best Remedy For Hate, Helplessness & Despair

March 14, 2019 by Dr. Sandra E. Cohen

The River’s family’s “I Got You” kind of love is If Beale Street Could Talk’s most potent reminder of exactly what transcends hate, helplessness, and despair. We see it when Tish’s dad holds her: “I got you, baby, I got you.” When Tish says to her newborn son: “I got you. I got you. I …

Read moreIF BEALE STREET COULD TALK
That “I Got You” Kind Of Love
The Best Remedy For Hate, Helplessness & Despair
MAD MAX FURY ROAD Depression & Tyrants That Take Over Your Mind

MAD MAX FURY ROAD
Depression &
Tyrants That Take Over Your Mind

February 25, 2016 by Dr. Sandra E. Cohen

Opportunists in the mind take over in states of emotional deprivation. Immortan Joe (Hugh Keays-Byrne) in Director George Miller’s western style post apocalyptic film, Mad Max:Fury Road, is a good example. As a psychoanalyst who treats severe depressive states, I found this film a fascinating allegorical tale of the conditions under which mental tyrants take over, …

Read moreMAD MAX FURY ROAD
Depression &
Tyrants That Take Over Your Mind
Camus's Sisyphus Versus Woody Allen's Irrational Man

CAMUS’S SISYPHUS
Versus WOODY ALLEN’S
IRRATIONAL MAN

July 24, 2015 by Dr. Sandra E. Cohen

Albert Camus, best known for his masterpiece novel The Stranger, wrote an entire book (believe it or not) on The Myth Of Sisyphus. Camus’s point is that Sisyphus is happy because he’s accepted his life. This is exactly what Woody Allen’s existential philosophy professor in The Irrational Man can’t find a way to do. He …

Read moreCAMUS’S SISYPHUS
Versus WOODY ALLEN’S
IRRATIONAL MAN

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

Everything Everywhere All At Once Breaking Out of Someone Else's Box
Nomadland: A Lonely Nomad in the Land of Loss
The Power of the Dog Why Phil Burbank’s Cruelty is About What He Hates in Himself
SOUND OF METAL How Silence Stops A Man From Running

Copyright © 2023 · Sandra E. Cohen, Ph.D. · All Rights Reserved