Love
Gary D. Chapman, Northfield Publishing How can couples who want to make their marriage work regain the loving feelings from earlier years? This is a question asked by many clients in couples therapy and obviously an excellent one. One challenge is that the whirlwind passionate experience of falling in love is magical — in part…
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Director: John Madden Screenplay: Ol Parker Stars: Judi Dench, Maggie Smith, Bill Nighy, Dev Patel PG – 122 Minutes We are socialized to imagine that getting engaged and planning a wedding will be a magical whirlwind fulfilling life-long fantasies of white lace, multi-level tiered cakes and happy-ever-after. Any couples therapist with experience in pre-marital counseling…
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Director: Charlie McDowell Writer: Justin Lader 91 minutes/ August, 2014 Infidelity is a common topic of conversation in couples therapy. While discovering that one’s partner was unfaithful is a devastating and often traumatic experience, many couples can and do work through this discovery and come out stronger on the other side. One of the toughest…
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Nicole Krauss, 2005, W.W. Norton & Company With Valentine’s Day approaching, love is in the air and on peoples’ minds. As a therapist, I notice that December through February is my busiest time of year. February, not surprisingly, is a month when clients in therapy want to talk about love. As a big believer in…
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The Undertaking A Novel by Audrey Magee Finalist for the Baileys Women’s Prize Conversations about the difference between infatuation and love are commonplace in a therapist’s office. Many clients seek therapy when a relationship fueled by intense infatuation does not mature into love. It is often useful to explore one’s own patterns in relationships and…
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What makes a marriage work? What makes a relationship last? How does work influence marriage? How does marriage influence work? How important is it to make time to see friends? These are questions that come up frequently in psychotherapy. Wallace Stegner’s 1987 classic novel on love, literature, friendship and marriage illuminates the timeless quality of…
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Most of us experience some form of social anxiety. We may feel nervous before a social gathering or slightly agitated during group activities. In the extreme, social anxiety compromises the ability to connect to another person in an intimate relationship. Jean-Pierre Ameris’ 2010 French film “Les Emotifs Anonymous” is a comedic but meaningful study of what happens…
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Meg Wolitzer’s page-turning novel traces the experiences and relationships of six friends who meet as teenagers at Spirit-in-the-Woods arts camp in the summer of 1974. Wolitzer captures these glorious fifteen and sixteen year old souls with their musings, quirks, and complexities. Readers will relish their adolescent ability to be intensely vulnerable and real with each…
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If you have tween or teen daughters, it is highly likely that you have already heard an earful about John Green’s bestselling novel and subsequently recently released film, The Fault in our Stars. Even if you do not have teens or tweens, you would have to be living under a rock to have missed the…
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Cinematic portrayals of couples therapy are tough to acheive. While television series such as In Treatment and The Sopranos have done a wonderful job of conveying what its like to experience individual psychotherapy, a realistic portrayal is much harder to achieve in a film. And even harder to achieve with respect to couples. The groundbreaking film Hope Springs (available on DVD) achieves…
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