• 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

jake gyllenhaal

Stonger PTSD Flashbacks & Triggers Remembering Jeff Bauman's PTSD

STRONGER
Flashbacks & Triggers
Remembering Jeff Bauman’s PTSD

October 5, 2017 by Dr. Sandra E. Cohen

PTSD always follows trauma. No traumatized person is “strong” enough to escape it. Yet, for complicated reasons, Post Traumatic Stress symptoms are too frequently off everyone’s radar, particularly the radar of the one suffering. The reasons are both straight out of the DSM-V and very individual. Jeff Bauman’s story in David Gordon Green’s powerful new film, Stronger, with Jake Gyllenhaal’s deeply moving performance as Jeff and Tatiana Maslany’s complex and engagingly real portrayal of his girlfriend, Erin Hurley, is a good place to start understanding what happens after trauma.

Read moreSTRONGER
Flashbacks & Triggers
Remembering Jeff Bauman’s PTSD
Jake Gyllenhaal Demolition and Grieving

JAKE GYLLENHAAL
DEMOLITION
Ways Not to Grieve

September 11, 2015 by Dr. Sandra E. Cohen

I just watched the trailer for Jake Gyllenhaal’s upcoming 2016 film, Demolition, about the aftermath of his character, Davis’s, sudden loss of his wife, Julia. Loss can take many forms. As the trailer shows, Davis unravels. He can’t pull himself together. His father-in-law tries to encourage him to rebuild his life. To do so, he …

Read moreJAKE GYLLENHAAL
DEMOLITION
Ways Not to Grieve

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
SOUND OF METAL How Silence Stops A Man From Running
The Father Dementia and The Fight To Hold Onto Who He Was

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