Random Worst Fictional Therapists in Television History (14 items)

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  (#8) Violet Turner

  • Private Practice

  While Violet’s intentions are generally good, she proves time and time again that she’s way too self-involved to actually help her patients. She has a special talent of ignoring their problems to focus on her own. And while a lot of horrible things happen to her over the course of the series, that’s no excuse for sucking at her job. She even gets her license suspended due to using details of patients in a book. That’s as self-involved as one gets.

   
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  (#5) Faith Wolper

   

  This is one of our favorite, hilariously bad therapists. As Christian’s therapist, Faith is nothing but professional. She pushes him to wonder whether he’s in love with his partner, Sean, basically causing him to have an existential crisis. She also sleeps with Christian and becomes obsessed with him, to the point where she gets a “Property of Christian Troy” tattoo. She also eventually tells Sean about Christian’s insecurities, information that should have stayed confidential. If there’s a Bingo card for bad therapist behavior, Faith is filling. It. Up.

   
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  (#4) Arnold Wayne (Mad Men)

  Wayne is Betty Draper’s psychiatrist and he was pretty terrible even by awful 1960s standards. When Betty is having trouble, Don sends her to a psychiatrist to address her feelings which would be really good and helpful, except Dr. Wayne is all too eager to tell Don everything that he and Betty talk about. Don calls Dr. Wayne after all of his sessions with Betty and asks him some version of “So, what’s wrong with my silly, trash wife?” Dr. Wayne has no problem violating doctor/patient confidentiality and filling Don in on everything he learns. Therapy and psychiatry require a tremendous amount of trust, and that gets thrown out the window if your doctor is ready to hop on the phone with your husband to basically say “Yeah, you’re wife’s just annoying and crazy. Women, am I right?”
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  (#12) Sister Peter Marie Reimondo (Oz)

  Sister Peter has all the marks of a good therapist. She cares about the inmates at Oswald State Correctional Facility and can stay calm in a crisis. And yet, despite knowing better, she falls for a convicted multiple murderer and sociopath. Moreover, she is devoted to her signature therapeutic innovation, the victim/offender confrontation program, which forces in-prison victims of assault to directly address their assaulters. There’s not really a successful, agreed upon precedent for this form of therapy in modern mental health. She basically encourages enemies to explore their feelings together, which could be devastating for victims of serious crimes. And in the show, it literally never leads to a breakthrough for anyone. Over the course of Oz’s run, the prison gets overrun by a riot and eventually blown up by bombs, the warden gets murdered and everyone just ends up killing each other. Great therapy work, Doc!

   
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  (#13) Tracey Clark (Ally McBeal)

  Clark’s methods are clearly unorthodox, from calling Ally nuts to advising her to come up with a theme song for her life. An advocate for smile therapy (a nonsense thing), Ally’s therapist tried to help her client with some tough love. It may have made for hilarious television, but we bet you wouldn’t like to be treated by someone as kooky as Clark in real life.
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  (#14) Linda Martin (Lucifer)

  Counseling the Devil is no easy job, we’ll give her that. Still, Linda and Lucifer started off their relationship by exchanging therapy for sex, a clear ethics violation. Hell, a clear everything violation. Linda also sees Lucifer outside their therapy sessions, blurring the lines between friend and counselor. Furthermore, when Lucifer eventually reveals his true, demonic face to Linda, she reacts like no therapist should. Shock, silence, and terror. Not that there’s a rule book out there for dealing with the ruler of Hell, but still. A bit more self-control would have been advised.

   

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