By Phillip Freeman, MD, DMH The excerpt below comes from a paper given at the Cape Playhouse in Dennis, Massachusetts, on the occasion of its production of the Mark St. Germain play Freud’s Last Session, about an encounter between Sigmund Freud and C.S. Lewis. Following the excerpt is a brief article describing and suggested by the discussion that followed the paper. An excerpt from “Dramatizing Ideas in Mark St. Germain’s Freud’s...
An “Off the Couch” Discussion of the Film Her (2013)
This film plays with the way we experience being “known” by someone else, being intimate, being intruded upon, having our personality invaded. A word about Spike Jonze’s work: If you have seen Being John Malkovich (1999) or Adaptation (2002), you recognize in this “science fiction romantic comedy-drama” what Liam Lacey calls the “lonely guy genre.” We have our basic socially awkward nerd. Like all the lonely...
An “Off the Couch” Discussion of the Film Nebraska
By Michele Baker , M.D. The Nebraska of director Alexander Payne and writer Bob Nelson’s movie of the same name, shot in iconic black and white, evokes the childhood of the film’s central character. The elderly Woodrow Grant, brought to life by Bruce Dern, is a man with dementia who has a monomaniacal drive to get to Lincoln, Nebraska, in order to collect the $1 million he delusionally believes he has won in what everyone else in his life knows...
BPSI Off the Couch: The Stories We Tell
By Jonathan Kolb M.D. Spoiler Alert: There are surprises in this film. Do not read what follows if you have not seen the film, and want to have the experience that it provides. The Stories We Tell, a film by Sarah Polley, played in some Festivals and opened to good reviews in the Spring of 2013. In a variety of formats, from black and white home movies to what seem like old color sequences, and more contemporary sequences shot...
