Sandra Cohen Ph.D.

Sandra Cohen Ph.D. Dr. Sandra Cohen is a certified Psychoanalyst and Trauma Informed Specialist focused on childhood trauma and its aftereffects. Speaker. Author. Educator. We see.

My name is Dr. Sandra Cohen and I am a certified psychoanalyst and licensed clinical psychologist with a practice in Beverly Hills, California. Each time I watch a film, TV show or read a book, my psychoanalyst’s mind begins to construct the same kind of understandings I might give to my patients. Pop culture often depicts real human problems with startling accuracy. Why is this so? Fictional char

acters are informed by their writer’s experiences and made more convincing by what we bring as we watch or read. Our unconscious minds unite with the writer’s. Personal experience is made public. We relate. We know. The early memories and unconscious struggles of these characters show us what we can’t so easily know about other people or ourselves. My musings at Characters on the Couch give me a chance to tell you what I see in ways similar to how I talk with my patients.

The Big Sick tells us a lot about those old family rules you live by. They’re not so easy to break. They turn into “shou...
06/09/2026

The Big Sick tells us a lot about those old family rules you live by. They’re not so easy to break. They turn into “should’s.” Carry terrible guilt. They make you scared. And, along with all that, those rules confuse you.

Particularly when it comes to deciding what you can let yourself have and even what you want. Worse, what if choosing what you want means losing someone you love? What if there is more than one loss on the table? Which loss is the one you finally know you have to choose?

Theodore has a broken heart.His marriage has come to a devastatingly sad end. He writes beautiful love letters for other...
06/05/2026

Theodore has a broken heart.

His marriage has come to a devastatingly sad end. He writes beautiful love letters for other people, but he’s afraid to open his own heart again. So when Samantha appears in Her, always available, always interested, always there, it makes perfect sense that he falls in love.

Who wouldn’t want a relationship where you never have to risk disappointment?

But love means living with another person’s separateness. Their interests. Their needs. Their life beyond you.

For Theodore, that’s the hardest lesson of all.

Because when your first experience of love leaves you feeling alone, it’s tempting to retreat into fantasy. Yet healing comes from learning that someone having a life of their own is not a rejection.

Maybe that’s what Her is really about: learning what love is and what love is not.

Need and greed are two different things.You can be hungry for success. You can want more for yourself. But when greed ta...
06/03/2026

Need and greed are two different things.

You can be hungry for success. You can want more for yourself. But when greed takes over, there’s no room left for anyone else.

In The Wolf of Wall Street, Jordan Belfort knows how to appeal to need. That’s his gift. But he’s consumed by something else entirely. More money. More power. More admiration. More of everything.
Envy. Jealousy. Arrogance. Greed. Primitive emotions gone wild.

And when greed becomes insidiously poisonous, you stop caring who gets hurt. You take anyone down to get what you want. There are no real friends in that kind of world.

There’s only MORE.

And it’s never enough.

*SPOILERS AHEAD*In Sheep Detectives, Lily believes sheep turn into clouds because the truth about death feels unbearable...
05/29/2026

*SPOILERS AHEAD*

In Sheep Detectives, Lily believes sheep turn into clouds because the truth about death feels unbearable. “Sheep aren’t meant to feel some things; we must choose to forget.” But forgetting doesn’t solve trauma. It doesn’t make loss not happen. It doesn’t help you heal.

Sebastian knows that. George saved him. George loved him. And Sebastian never forgot.

It takes courage to remember painful things. To cross the road. To leave the pasture. To face the murder that isn’t in a book. Of her beloved shepherd, George.

But slowly Lily learns what Mopple knew all along: “If you forget the sad and painful things, you forget the good things too.”

Remembering keeps your loved ones alive inside of you.
And love? “It’s the thing with no end.”

05/26/2026

Anton Chigurh walks through No Country for Old Men like a man who killed off every feeling inside himself. Need. Hunger. Vulnerability. Love.

But for one split second, you see something underneath the blankness. A longing. Like no one ever held him safely enough to let him stay human.

05/21/2026

Black Swan is about what happens when becoming yourself feels dangerous.

Nina wants desire. Freedom. A self of her own.But she’s terrified of losing Mommy’s love.

That’s the split that destroys her.

Read my full piece on Black Swan at the link in my bio!

When you’re surrounded by terror, you need to know someone is there.That’s Schofield in 1917. Trauma is everywhere. Dead...
05/15/2026

When you’re surrounded by terror, you need to know someone is there.

That’s Schofield in 1917. Trauma is everywhere. Dead bodies. Fear. The constant threat of loss. Schofield keeps moving because of Blake. Because of Blake’s brother. Because his family waits for him at home.

When loss feels close at every moment, love becomes the thing that carries you forward.

Even after Blake dies, Schofield keeps his friend with him. Through grief. Through exhaustion. Through impossible danger.

And at the end of 1917, Schofield looks at the photo of his wife and daughters. You know what he’s been trying to get back to all along.

In Brooklyn, Eilis’s homesickness is rooted in something much deeper than Ireland. Separation anxiety. How could Eilis n...
05/13/2026

In Brooklyn, Eilis’s homesickness is rooted in something much deeper than Ireland. Separation anxiety. How could Eilis not be anxious about separating from a mother who doesn’t want to let her go?

Her mother makes Ellis believe she can’t live without her. So, Eilis lives with guilt about wanting her own life. And when a child fears losing a mother’s love, she represses her feelings. That’s Eilis. Homesick. Guilty. Full of self-doubt. Torn between what she wants and what she’s been made to feel responsible for.

Brooklyn becomes more than a place. With Tony, Eilis begins to find a new and healing home. A chance for personal growth, freedom to feel, and Tony’s love.

But choosing that life means risking the loss she’s feared all along: She’s lost her mother completely.

Standing up for the life she wants, needs, and deserves takes enormous courage for Eilis. But by getting back on the ship to Brooklyn, she finally stands up to the voice inside her that says she must stay small, guilty, and bound to home forever.

05/06/2026

When you grow up around fighting, instability, or divorce, love can start to feel dangerous. So you try to protect yourself.

You make rules. You look for someone who checks every box: height, money, stability. You convince yourself that if you choose “correctly,” you won’t get hurt.

That’s Lucy in Materialists.

She loves John. But loving someone and feeling safe enough to need them are two different things. Because when your childhood was hard, you don’t just fear losing love. You fear depending on it.

And the film understands something painful: sometimes the person who feels safest on paper isn’t the person who actually makes you feel safe.

The safest person is the one who stays. Who listens. Who loves you anyway.

In Aronofsky’s Black Swan, Nina is torn apart by a terrible conflict she can’t resolve: Stay Mommy’s “sweet girl,” never...
05/04/2026

In Aronofsky’s Black Swan, Nina is torn apart by a terrible conflict she can’t resolve: Stay Mommy’s “sweet girl,” never grow up, and disappear into that role? Or feel desire, claim her body, have a separate self, and risk everything that has ever felt safe? Nina’s GUILT drives this internal battle, and her guilt is tormenting and relentless.

You see it in the split Nina lives with: White Swan versus Black Swan. White is Nina’s controlled, good, innocent self that keeps Mommy happy. Her Black self is sexual, alive, full of wanting more. But Black is betrayal. Danger. It could cost her Mommy’s love.

Nina’s conflict between Black and White Swan slowly tears her apart. Her guilt persecutes her. It distorts reality. Nina loses her ability to see what’s real and descends into psychosis.

When she finally lets herself feel something, something that is hers and no one else’s, it is questionable as to whether Nina will survive.

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