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Characters On The Couch

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

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movie review

American Sniper Why Does A Soldier Go Back For More & More

AMERICAN SNIPER
What Makes A Soldier
Go Back For More … And More

February 17, 2015 by Dr. Sandra E. Cohen

Clint Eastwood’s American Sniper tells the story of parental directives that live on long past childhood just as much it tells the horrors of war and its psychological costs. Chris Kyle can’t be a sheep and he certainly can’t be a wolf preying on the innocent. His dad would kill him for that. But, “finishing” …

Read moreAMERICAN SNIPER
What Makes A Soldier
Go Back For More … And More
Whiplash Why Cruelty Is Not The Winner

WHIPLASH
Why Cruelty is Not The Winner

February 15, 2015 by Dr. Sandra E. Cohen

“I don’t want the Raisinettes, I just eat around them” … that’s what Andrew Neiman, in Whiplash, does with the hurts in his life. That’s what he tries to do with jazz teacher Terrance Fletcher’s demeaning and crude sadism in this psychologically riveting film. Fletcher’s cruelty has its hook and he finds it in Andrew’s …

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Why Cruelty is Not The Winner
The Grand Budapest Hotel What Fake Persona's Cover Up

THE GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL
What Fake Personas Cover-Up

February 11, 2015 by Dr. Sandra E. Cohen

Why does someone create an illusion of who they are? Wes Anderson, a master of psychological ironies, tells us quite a lot about that subject in The Grand Budapest Hotel. At the center of the film is M. Gustave trying to live as someone he is not. All around him are juxtapositions of barbarism with …

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What Fake Personas Cover-Up
Imitation Game Turing's Anxiety Keeping Peas and Carrots Apart

THE IMITATION GAME
Turing’s Anxiety
Keeping Peas And Carrots Apart

February 8, 2015 by Dr. Sandra E. Cohen

Peas versus carrots: thinking versus feeling. Which is the winner? Alan Turing’s mathematical thinking, as The Imitation Game shows, cracked Nazi Germany’s Enigma code during WWII and saved millions. Yet, the same man’s brilliant thinking couldn’t save him. Crippled by terrible psychological fears (far worsened by Britain’s criminalization of homosexuality), his crafty “imitation game” was …

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Turing’s Anxiety
Keeping Peas And Carrots Apart
The Theory of Everything My Views on Loneliness

THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING
My Views On Loneliness

February 8, 2015 by Dr. Sandra E. Cohen

Loneliness comes in many forms. James Marsh’s The Theory of Everything tells a few stories of loneliness – Stephen Hawkings’, Jane Hawkings, and Jonathan Hellyer Jones. Jonathan – choir director, family helper, and the man who became Jane’s second husband – captures vividly what can become loneliness’ black hole when he says: “I suffer from the …

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My Views On Loneliness
My Old Lady Stories of the Past Self-Hate or Liberating Truth?

MY OLD LADY
Stories of a Past
Self-Hate or Liberating Truth?

January 5, 2015 by Dr. Sandra E. Cohen

The way any one of us lives with the past is a complicated thing. My Old Lady, a deeply psychological and sometimes shockingly honest film written and directed by Israel Horovitz, takes us layer upon layer into the kinds of deeply wrought emotional problems living with a difficult past can bring. Matthias Gold (Kevin Kline) lives …

Read moreMY OLD LADY
Stories of a Past
Self-Hate or Liberating Truth?
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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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