• 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

loss

roma-betrayal-loss-managing-grief

ROMA
Betrayal & Loss
2 Ways Of Managing Grief

February 11, 2019 by Dr. Sandra E. Cohen

Grief is a complex thing. Each of us grieves in our own way and for our own reasons. Alfonso Cuaron’s sensitive and compelling Roma, tells the story of Cleo, a domestic employee, and her employer, Ms. Sofia. We follow two very different women linked together in parallel universes of betrayal and loss. Two women with …

Read moreROMA
Betrayal & Loss
2 Ways Of Managing Grief
eighth grade sucks and a difficult history doesn't help

EIGHTH GRADE
6 Reasons Why Middle School Sucks
(& A Difficult History Doesn’t Help)

August 2, 2018 by Dr. Sandra E. Cohen

Middle School definitely sucks for many kids. It sucked for Kayla Day (Elsie Fisher) in her excruciatingly awkward (but at the same time sweet and hopeful) journey from Middle School to High School in Bo Burnham’s film Eighth Grade. Maybe it sucked for you. We see the obvious reasons in vivid Technicolor: the insecurities, the …

Read moreEIGHTH GRADE
6 Reasons Why Middle School Sucks
(& A Difficult History Doesn’t Help)
Leo Hurwitz Essay on Death In Memory of JFK

LEO HURWITZ
ESSAY ON DEATH
IN MEMORY OF JFK 1964

December 11, 2017 by Dr. Sandra E. Cohen

“A very dangerous and uncertain world, the President said on that last day” Leo Hurwitz’s Essay On Death (Watch Film) speaks to death’s randomness. Of course, JFK’s murder wasn’t random, but the fact that death can come out of nowhere at any time means we live constantly with the fragility of life. At the same …

Read moreLEO HURWITZ
ESSAY ON DEATH
IN MEMORY OF JFK 1964
lion-where-is-home-finding-home-characters-on-the-couch

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 …

Read moreLION
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 …

Read moreWONDERSTRUCK
Todd Haynes Builds Bridges
Out Of Lonely Worlds
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 …

Read moreTHE REVENANT
Humanizing Revenge
  • Previous
  • Go to page 1
  • Go to page 2
  • Go to page 3
  • Go to page 4
  • Interim pages omitted …
  • Go to page 6
  • Next

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