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Characters On The Couch

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

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trauma

GET OUT Trauma Never Again Getting Out

GET OUT
Trauma #Never Again
& “Getting Out”

November 2, 2020 by Dr. Sandra E. Cohen

Jordan Peele’s brilliantly conceived film, Get Out, does its job of shattering the myth that we’re living in a post-racial America. My great uncle, Leo Hurwitz’s film, Strange Victory, did the same in 1948 after we won the war against Hitler but came home to racism here. It’s now 72 years later and there’s still …

Read moreGET OUT
Trauma #Never Again
& “Getting Out”
the nightingale hate revenge grief and unexpected empathy

THE NIGHTINGALE
What A Well-Crafted Film Tells
About Hate, Revenge, Grief
& Unexpected Empathy

August 3, 2019 by Dr. Sandra E. Cohen

Forgiveness is overrated. Understanding is not. And, there’s much to understand in Jennifer Kent’s riveting, violently troubling, and powerful new film, The Nightingale; about trauma, PTSD, unbearable grief, and the sometimes unimaginable sources of empathy. No, no one should ever be expected to forgive their abusers. “Forgiveness” for sadistic cruelty isn’t healing. What helps is …

Read moreTHE NIGHTINGALE
What A Well-Crafted Film Tells
About Hate, Revenge, Grief
& Unexpected Empathy
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
The Shape of Water A Girl's Muteness A Creature's Aggression & Seemingly Magic Cures

THE SHAPE OF WATER
Seemingly Magic Cures

January 4, 2018 by Dr. Sandra E. Cohen

Cruelty and misunderstanding can make you a monster or a mute. Guillermo del Toro’s compelling allegorical fable, The Shape of Water, shows us that quite well. We can say all the obvious things about this multi-layered film set in its backdrop of the Cold War and a high-security government laboratory in 1962 Baltimore. There’s loneliness …

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Seemingly Magic Cures
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri Where Does the Buck Stop?

THREE BILLBOARDS
OUTSIDE EBBING, MISSOURI
How Does The Buck Finally Stop?

December 7, 2017 by Dr. Sandra E. Cohen

Martin McDonagh’s darkly comic and deeply painful Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri gives us a tough look at how anger and blame is one (ineffective) way of trying to handle very difficult feelings. We have Mildred Hayes (Frances McDormand), a bereaved mom: hardened, blunt, feeling uncharacteristically helpless, and furious about it. The town’s much loved …

Read moreTHREE BILLBOARDS
OUTSIDE EBBING, MISSOURI
How Does The Buck Finally Stop?
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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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