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Characters On The Couch

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

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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
Through The Glass Darkly Ingmar Bergman 1961 Can A Cold, Stony-Faced Father Drive A Girl Insane?

THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY
(Ingmar Bergman, 1961)
Can A Cold, Stony-Faced Father
Drive A Girl Insane?

May 29, 2019 by Dr. Sandra E. Cohen

Can a cold narcissistic father drive a girl insane? The short answer is yes. Wilfred Bion defined psychosis as hatred of reality. And, what is there to love about the reality of a self-obsessed father who cares more about his own desires than his children? Facing that is horror. We see it in Through A …

Read moreTHROUGH A GLASS DARKLY
(Ingmar Bergman, 1961)
Can A Cold, Stony-Faced Father
Drive A Girl Insane?
the seventh seal turning away from love

THE SEVENTH SEAL
(Ingmar Bergman 1958)
Turning Away From Love &
What It Takes To Open A Heart Again

May 21, 2019 by Dr. Sandra E. Cohen

Antonius Block is a Knight in despair. A kind of despair that puts him right into a fight for his life. A fight that forces him to challenge Death to a chess game, determined to outwit him. Can he do it? What will it take to tip our Knight’s waning hourglass back in his favor? …

Read moreTHE SEVENTH SEAL
(Ingmar Bergman 1958)
Turning Away From Love &
What It Takes To Open A Heart Again
Wild Strawberries, Ingmar Bergman, Cold Mother and a Sentence To A Lonely Life

WILD STRAWBERRIES
(Ingmar Bergman 1957)
Cold Mother Stops Emotional Time
& Sentences A Boy To Loneliness

March 18, 2019 by Dr. Sandra E. Cohen

“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

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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