#dr faye

[uglyolaf]

Well, I hope you're very happy. And I hope she knows you only like the beginnings of things.

Dr. Faye Miller

[demonprincex]

What I love about Mad Men's Faye Miller, and why I think she's the best fictional psychologist around, is that she's bad with people. 

Like so many real research psychologists, Faye gets all the theory of why people do what they do, but fails at applying it to her own life. She has short-lived romantic relationships, she's rude ("Go shit in the ocean!" ; "You'll be married again by this time next year"), she condescends to the other women in the SCDP office.

She believes in subtly manipulating people with honey rather than vinegar, but her real-life attempts at manipulation are really overpracticed and clunky. She wears a ring around the office so that men won't hit on her, then she reveals it's all a farce to the most available, attractive bachelor in the office. To make the secretaries feel comfortable around her (so they'll divulge useful focus group data), Faye pretends that she's forgotten and disrespected just like they are, with no name tag and no title. In her focus group, she presses the women until they cry; when a women runs out sobbing, she ignores it and tells the focus group to continue. Afterward, she saunters out of the room without one iota of guilt, just pleased to have the data. 

When faced with Sally, Faye frets, "I don't have much child psychology!" She proceeds to treat the canny tween like she's a toddler, talking down to her -- when she sees Sally a second day in a row, Faye says, "Hi, I'm Dr. Faye. Remember me, from yesterday?" as if Sally is two years old or suffering from shot-term memory loss. 

These traits probably rub some viewers the wrong way, but they absolutely made me fall in love with Dr. Faye. She's a shrewd, professional, educated woman in an era that was venomous and hostile to her. That alone makes her kind of a bamf. But as a psychologist I especially love her for being a stone cold scientist who is interested in human motivation and consumer behavior, but who can't handle human relationships when she's caught on the other side of the focus-room glass.