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 characters 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.

02/27/2026

Desperation doesn’t just change what you do. It changes what you can see.

In No Other Choice, Man-su loses the job that defines his identity — and with it, his sense of worth. Humiliation becomes unbearable. Competition feels like threat. And in that distorted state of mind, eliminating the threat starts to feel like survival.

That’s how trauma works. It narrows the world until winning is the only option — even if it costs you your humanity.

Did he really have no other choice?

*SPOILERS AHEAD*Claire has Mike’s love. A lot of it. He sees her in a way her mother never did. He believes in her talen...
02/19/2026

*SPOILERS AHEAD*
Claire has Mike’s love. A lot of it. He sees her in a way her mother never did. He believes in her talent. He stands by her.

But sometimes love is not enough to lift you out of a severe depression, especially when a new trauma lands on top of an old one. The accident doesn’t just take Claire’s leg. It brings back the voice that has always made her feel small. The shame. The self-doubt. The belief that she has to “do it herself.”

Depression closes her down. Love can’t break through it. Not until she talks. Not until she lets herself grieve what was taken... from her body and from her past.

Read my full piece on Craig Brewer’s Song Sung Blue at the link in my bio!

Happy Valentine’s Day! In these five films, we watch what actually stirs beneath romance: the longing to be seen, the fe...
02/14/2026

Happy Valentine’s Day! In these five films, we watch what actually stirs beneath romance: the longing to be seen, the fear of being left, the pull of old attachment wounds, the safety of fantasy, the ache of restraint.

We see how temporary intimacy can feel safer than permanence (Before Sunrise). How rescue fantasies collapse under the weight of unmet childhood needs (Blue Valentine). How we’re drawn to those who mirror our own otherness (The Shape of Water). How desire can be contained to protect the self from guilt and repetition (In the Mood for Love). And how past separation can lead us to seek love where we believe we can better control the risk (Her).

If you find yourself thinking about love this weekend - its risks, its repetitions, its hopes - any of these films might keep you company.

**SPOILERS AHEAD**Bugonia is not really about aliens. It’s about alienation. About what happens when severe trauma makes...
02/10/2026

**SPOILERS AHEAD**

Bugonia is not really about aliens. It’s about alienation. About what happens when severe trauma makes you feel outside of humanity itself.

Mother neglect. Mother loss. Sexual trauma. Loneliness piled on loneliness. When no one is there to help you feel safe, loved, or held, the mind becomes confused. Who am I? Who are you? What is real? These questions haunt a traumatized psyche.

Teddy’s delusions are not random. They are pain traps. Attempts to escape unbearable sadness, need, and shame. If you can erase desire, shut down feeling, project pain into someone else, maybe you won’t have to feel so alone. Maybe you won’t feel so bad. So unlovable. So alien.

Bugonia shows us the danger of pain with nowhere to go. The danger of alienation replacing connection. The danger of trying to annihilate feeling instead of being helped to hold it.

Nomadland follows Fern through a landscape shaped by loss. After her husband dies and her town disappears, she moves thr...
02/06/2026

Nomadland follows Fern through a landscape shaped by loss. After her husband dies and her town disappears, she moves through the world as a kind of emotional nomad, carrying grief with her from place to place.

In Chloé Zhao’s hands, grief becomes motion. Fern keeps herself safe by needing no one, refusing help, and staying on the move. Love after loss feels risky. Connection feels like something that could take her under.

Along the road, though, Fern encounters a different way of living with grief—one built on presence rather than permanence. People show up for each other without asking for more than can be given. Remembering doesn’t mean stopping.

Nomadland offers a gentle truth: grief doesn’t disappear, but it can make room. What’s remembered lives. And sometimes, love continues—down the road.

It Ends With Us is often described as a story about ending domestic violence. But underneath that, it’s a story about ho...
02/04/2026

It Ends With Us is often described as a story about ending domestic violence. But underneath that, it’s a story about how traumatized children grow into love.

When love wasn’t safe early on, it doesn’t feel safe later. It feels unreliable. Frightening. Capable of turning violent or disappearing without warning. Lily, Ryle, and Atlas each carry their childhood wounds into adulthood, reacting in different ways—repeating the past, trying to repair it, or leaving before they can be left.

This film shows how trauma shapes desire, trust, and self-worth. And it asks a difficult question: how do you stop repeating what you grew up with?

Sometimes, ending the cycle doesn’t mean enduring or fixing someone else. It means choosing safety, self-knowledge, and a different kind of love.

**SPOILERS AHEAD**What wounds most deeply in Sentimental Value isn’t cruelty or drama. It’s absence.No one there when Gu...
02/02/2026

**SPOILERS AHEAD**

What wounds most deeply in Sentimental Value isn’t cruelty or drama. It’s absence.

No one there when Gustav lost his mother. No one there for Nora when her father disappeared.

When feelings were never held, they don’t arrive gently later—they arrive as panic. As terror. As the need to shut everything down before longing gets the upper hand.

Sentimental Value shows how trauma passes quietly from parent to child, and how love can feel unsafe when no one stayed long enough to make it so. But it also shows something else: the power of presence. Of being seen. Of someone finally staying to listen.

**SPOILERS AHEAD**Humans have a wide range of feelings. That is, unless you have to shut them down.In It Was Just an Acc...
01/26/2026

**SPOILERS AHEAD**

Humans have a wide range of feelings. That is, unless you have to shut them down.

In It Was Just an Accident, revenge is fueled by rage, humiliation, and trauma—but also interrupted by doubt, conscience, and empathy.
Vahid wants revenge against the man who tortured him. And who wouldn’t? Trauma can ruin a life. Rage is a primary feeling after trauma. But revenge isn’t simple here. Vahid has morals. He can’t kill the wrong man. He can’t bury his ideals along with his enemy.

And then empathy breaks through - unexpectedly - through a frightened child, a pregnant wife, and the reminder of what it means to be human. What Vahid really wants isn’t murder. It’s acknowledgment. Confession. Remorse. The chance to finally grieve.

It Was Just an Accident asks whether revenge can ever heal—or whether empathy, even when it’s risky, is the only thing that truly interrupts the cycle of trauma.

**SPOILERS AHEAD**Humans have a wide range of feelings. That is, unless you have to shut them down.In It Was Just an Acc...
01/26/2026

**SPOILERS AHEAD**

Humans have a wide range of feelings. That is, unless you have to shut them down.

In It Was Just an Accident, revenge is fueled by rage, humiliation, and trauma—but also interrupted by doubt, conscience, and empathy.
Vahid wants revenge against the man who tortured him. And who wouldn’t? Trauma can ruin a life. Rage is a primary feeling after trauma. But revenge isn’t simple here. Vahid has morals. He can’t kill the wrong man. He can’t bury his ideals along with his enemy.

And then empathy breaks through - unexpectedly - through a frightened child, a pregnant wife, and the reminder of what it means to be human. What Vahid really wants isn’t murder. It’s acknowledgment. Confession. Remorse. The chance to finally grieve.

It Was Just an Accident asks whether revenge can ever heal—or whether empathy, even when it’s risky, is the only thing that truly interrupts the cycle of trauma.

The Shawshank Redemption reminds us that hope isn’t naïve or escapist. It’s necessary. It’s what keeps despair from winn...
01/21/2026

The Shawshank Redemption reminds us that hope isn’t naïve or escapist. It’s necessary. It’s what keeps despair from winning. Even when you’re trapped. Even when the walls feel permanent.

Andy Dufresne teaches us that you can lose your freedom, your certainty, even your future—and still protect what matters most: the music inside you. The self that cannot be taken.

Hope doesn’t deny suffering. It outwits it. Get busy living.

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