As a Licensed Clinical Social Worker specializing in trauma, Hilary Jacobs Hendel knows all about people's inner demons. That's why Matthew Weiner tapped her to offer psychological consulting for Mad Men. 

Q: What was Matthew Weiner looking for from you as a consultant?

A: Mostly in the first season, he needed advice on the credibility of the scenes with the psychiatrist. He wants everything to be authentic, so we would talk about the characters to make sure that it made sense why Betty was having a certain symptoms, like with her hands feeling numb. I would walk through what a possible history might be for her. And then he would also just want the dialogue to be accurate -- he'd send me the script to check what the psychiatrist was saying and how he was reacting.

Q: What's going on with Betty's psychiatrist? He never talks.

A: Well that's how it was back in 1960. Freudian analysis was pretty much the only thing there was. Back then an analyst would say very little with the idea of being a blank slate, as neutral as possible so that anything that emerged in the treatment, anything that the patient brought in, was really from themselves.

Q: How do you treat a patient you don't speak to?

A: What was supposed to be curative was that the analyst would continue to listen and then periodically make an interpretation -- at one point in the show he says something like, "You're angry." That's not a complicated interpretation, but that's listening to her and interpreting her emotional state, which is helpful to some people who don't know they're angry. The interpretation reflects back behavior that ideally would let her reflect on it: I'm angry. Why am I angry? Although I have to say the psychiatrist in Mad Men has got serious personality flaws.

Q: Aside from his breaching confidentially, how would you rate Dr. Wayne?

A: It's pretty black and white that he shouldn't have done that, but it's such a gray area because she seems to be benefiting. She seems to enjoy coming, she speaks. That's really the way it is in current times -- just the act of speaking and talking and having someone listen is helpful.

Q: How would you diagnose Betty?

Q: Well, Matt came to me with her hands being numb, and we talked about an appropriate interpretation of that symptom. It might be interpreted that she has a lot of unconscious anger with violent impulses. And that by numbing the hands it's a way to prevent an unconscious fear that she would hurt somebody because she's enraged. We speculated she had issues with her mom and she has issues with Don. And often fear and anger go hand in hand -- fear of anger especially for women who are not supposed to be angry. When she interacts with Helen Bishop, there is a little bit of jealousy and anxiety of how this woman is surviving, how it is to be a single mother. Then we fast-forward to the end of the season and she has fear about confronting Don, and the risk of what might happen in a confrontation about his affairs.

Q: What psychological themes do you see running through the show as a whole?

A: Well one thing is substance abuse -- they're all self-medicating their troubles. There's this idea of leading lives of quiet desperation. That's what I think about when I think of Betty, of Don, of Roger Sterling. The character that seems most healthy is Joan. She seems just in touch with who she is. She may sometimes harbor feelings like jealousy, or get sad every now and then because she's single and doesn't have a family, but those are all human emotions. The rest, really mostly the men, are really struggling with who they are. Freud used to say that the two signs of mental health were that you could work and you could love. So they can work, but have more problems in the loving department and compensate with a lot of drinking and substance abuse. I find it fascinating, thinking of the history of these people, thinking about what makes them tick and connecting it to their history. Then they become a whole person, a whole character that makes sense.