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Characters On The Couch

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

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grief

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LION
Where is Home?
A Lost Boy & Adoption
Two Mothers & Jalebi Clues

November 2, 2017 by Dr. Sandra E. Cohen

Where is home? That’s the complicated question at the heart of Garth Davis’ film Lion, for a lost, bewildered, illiterate, scared, traumatized, stoically brave, and lovingly gentle 5-year-old boy, Saroo (Sunny Pawar). This little boy accidentally finds himself on a train taking him far, far from home, where he can’t speak the language and has …

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Where is Home?
A Lost Boy & Adoption
Two Mothers & Jalebi Clues
Wonderstruck Todd Haynes Builds Bridges Out of Lonely Worlds

WONDERSTRUCK
Todd Haynes Builds Bridges
Out Of Lonely Worlds

October 26, 2017 by Dr. Sandra E. Cohen

Loneliness is a silent world. That world is the world Ben (Oakes Fegley), Rose (Millicent Simmonds), and Jamie (Jaden Michael) inhabit in Todd Haynes’ gorgeously filmed and sensitively rendered half-period piece, half-silent and all-around beautifully woven film Wonderstruck. Haynes draws on the visual; on images that speak louder than words, to tell the story of …

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Todd Haynes Builds Bridges
Out Of Lonely Worlds
Wind River Confusing Gap In FBI Agent Jane Banner's Character

WIND RIVER
Confusing Gap in FBI Agent
Jane Banner’s Character

September 14, 2017 by Dr. Sandra E. Cohen

Where does Wind River’s Jane Banner, FBI Agent, (Elizabeth Olson) fit into the mix of marginalized Native Americans and a white Game Tracker (Jeremy Renner) with a significant loss of his own? And, who was she anyway, coming out of nowhere in all her conspicuously dissimilar blonde beauty? We never really know. The film, with …

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Confusing Gap in FBI Agent
Jane Banner’s Character
Demoliton Tearing Down Walls Against Grief

DEMOLITION
Tearing Down Walls
Against Grief

June 30, 2017 by Dr. Sandra E. Cohen

Director Jean-Marc Vallee’s film, Demolition, stars Jake Gyllenhaal as Davis Mitchell, a man who tragically loses his wife in a sudden car accident. If you haven’t seen the film, Demolition is a must-watch to understand the subtleties of this post and, more so, the intricacies of Davis’ reaction. This is a film about a man’s …

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Tearing Down Walls
Against Grief
The Look of Silence Why A Replacement Child Must Face His Brother's Death

THE LOOK OF SILENCE
Why A Replacement Child
Must Face His Brother’s Death

March 24, 2016 by Dr. Sandra E. Cohen

Joshua Oppenheimer’s 2016 Oscar-nominated documentary, The Look Of Silence, is a riveting exploration of the Indonesian genocide’s complicated psychological aftermath. In 1965-1967, the military dictatorship killed over a million assumed Communists opposed to their rule. In the film, we follow the Rukun family, centered on 44-year-old Adi, all unable to grieve the brutal murder of …

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Why A Replacement Child
Must Face His Brother’s Death
The Revenant Humanizing Revenge

THE REVENANT
Humanizing Revenge

January 14, 2016 by Dr. Sandra E. Cohen

As much as I loved Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Birdman, I can’t say I felt the same about The Revenant. I know the film won big at the Golden Globes and has received Oscar nods for Best Picture and Best Actor. Perhaps that’s because a fantasy lives deep inside us about exacting revenge where we believe revenge …

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Humanizing Revenge
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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.”

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