Reel Therapy

Having become an annual shoe-in for an Emmy nomination the television show "How I Met Your Mother" has entered its fifth season with a lot of steam. One of the most obvious explanations for the show's success is Barney, a side character that is central to the show's popularity. In the past few weeks an interesting shift has occurred in his character, something that President Obama might call "a teachable moment." He spends most of his time entertaining us with his boundless energy and effortless charm, and what is equally obvious but less addressed in the show is the fact that this admirable but exhausting proclivity to entertain stems from his management of a chronic mental illness - narcissistic personality disorder. Read More

This past Thursday "The Office" aired the premiere of its sixth season. As I watched the episode and observed Michael's endearing yet pervasive social ineptitude for the hundredth time, I found myself asking a familiar question: How does he stay so happy?

Think about it. He's had the same job forever. He has no clear character strengths or accomplishments. He can't make friends. He's middle-aged and is only getting fatter and balder. Further, he is crazy. He is narcissistic or, rather, a caricature of narcissism. This means that virtually every thought, feeling and behavior he produces is in the service of attaining the one thing he is doomed to forever distance himself from: the attention and admiration of others. Read More

I've watched "Inglorious Basterds" twice, almost as many times as weeks it has been in theaters. Both times the showing was sold out, both times the audience applauded at the end. Tarantino has flirted with cinematic greatness before, coming closest with "Pulp Fiction." Somehow, in the face of his immature, self-indulgent proclivities for gratuitous violence and movie history references, The public is sending the movie to the top of the box office charts and film critics are practically writing eulogies to Tarantino. In short, this aggressively maverick filmmaker has transcended the acquired taste that his films have traditionally elicited into a new response that can only be described as a consensus of admiration. I believe he has exceeded all expectation because he has chosen to handle the notion of expectations with the finesse of a psychologist. Read More

In the mid-1990's something strange happened to Martin Lawrence, an exceedingly successful Hollywood comedian. He engaged in a violent outburst and drug abuse on the set of "A Thin Line Between Love and Hate." Increasingly erratic behavior culminated in an arrest for waving a pistol and screaming at tourists on Ventura Boulevard in L.A. The answers to psychological mysteries such as this are usually a combination of nature and nurture, of self and environment. Indeed, there may be a combustible relationship between a comedian's mindset and the social world of Hollywood success. In "Funny People," Judd Apatow reveals a surprisingly somber and complex profession that attracts surprisingly somber and complex people. Read More