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Characters On The Couch

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

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ptsd

PROMISING YOUNG WOMAN
Where Trauma Driven Obsession
Takes You & It’s Not Healing

May 8, 2021 by Dr. Sandra E. Cohen

Cassie lost her very best friend (and only true soulmate) to suicide. Why? A violent and repeated rape seriously traumatized Nina and she couldn’t go on. And, no one listened. No one saw the rape as rape and no one blamed the rapist. It makes sense, doesn’t it, that Cassie can now think of nothing …

Read morePROMISING YOUNG WOMAN
Where Trauma Driven Obsession
Takes You & It’s Not Healing
Taxi Driver Is Travis Bickle A Hero? Reality Or Grandiose Fantasy?

TAXI DRIVER
Is Travis Bickle A Hero?
Reality Or Grandiose Fantasy?

May 2, 2019 by Dr. Sandra E. Cohen

Travis Bickle (Robert DeNiro), age 26, is Taxi Driver’s lonely, alienated “hero.” Yes, he’s a Vietnam War vet, ex-marine, and likely has his share of PTSD. But, his problems stem from something much deeper than war trauma. He must have suffered some kind of childhood trauma, to be sure. He wouldn’t be so troubled if …

Read moreTAXI DRIVER
Is Travis Bickle A Hero?
Reality Or Grandiose Fantasy?
Leave No Trace What Happens When Trust Is Shattered

LEAVE NO TRACE
What Happens When Trust
Is Shattered?

October 21, 2018 by Dr. Sandra E. Cohen

Debra Granik’s Leave No Trace is a story about trauma and distrust. That might not be the most obvious thing in this compelling film about a Vietnam Vet and his 13-year-old daughter who live in hiding in a park forest outside Portland, Oregon. But for me, as a psychoanalyst, it is the film’s heart. Will …

Read moreLEAVE NO TRACE
What Happens When Trust
Is Shattered?
Operation Finale How One Man's Trauma Helped Capture Adolf Eichmann

OPERATION FINALE
One Man’s Holocaust Trauma
Helped Capture Adolf Eichmann

September 27, 2018 by Dr. Sandra E. Cohen

Peter Zvi Malkin’s Holocaust trauma worked in his favor to capture Adolf Eichmann, Hitler’s Chief Executioner; Head of the SS Office of Jewish Affairs, and the Architect of the Final Solution. At least that’s the Hollywood version of the story. It makes sense as PTSD goes. And, although Chris Weitz’s Operation Finale invented the dialogue …

Read moreOPERATION FINALE
One Man’s Holocaust Trauma
Helped Capture Adolf Eichmann
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

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

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