Weiner has already told us this is Don's search for intimacy. As the years have passed, his personality has changed for the following reasons:

-He has not been able to be his true and authentic self. He has had to cover himself and his true feelings in his attempt to leave his military commitment and childhood behind. It must affect your personality when you repress your true feelings and are constantly 'playing a role' or are constantly looking over your shoulder for the one person who could destroy your life.

-He had been trying to express his increasing anxiety (first) through an unknown number of affairs and then by trying to be a goody-two-shoes husband. He stopped when he saw they reduced his wife to an emotional child and affected her mental and physical health.

-He tried the hedonistic lifestyle on with Midge...she was his sexual equal but, he could not control her. At the time, he thought this was an important criteria for a partner.

-He thought he would just leave it all behind and tried to take Rachel with him. She rejected him and told him he certainly could not leave his children. He left her unconvinced she was right. He finally got to try on on the jet set lifestyle when he jumped in Joy's car. He quickly saw how it would affect his children and his relationship with his children when he saw Joy's brother carry those weary children in late at night. He looked into the little boy's eyes and knew he could not do that to little Bobby. He knew Rachel was right. He could not put his children through that. He thought he wanted this, but he didn't want to carry that hidden mark on his perfect image.

This took years of effort, and still Don has no solution to who he is nor what he really wants out of his life. Did he really want to squander the opportunity to create his life? Which of the men he's been playing is the 'real' person he wants to be? Don is on that quest now...through the fog into the light...to find out who he really is...and to determine what he really wants.

I feel Anna is there to help him with this part of his journey. As others have said, more of a mother-figure than anyone we have previously seen. She seemed to have a calming effect on him, and her tarot reading helped him see a path through the chaos.

His demeanor really changed the minute he arrived at Anna's door. We watched him express his interest in fast cars, and there was a joy I had not previously seen on his face. His new life begins with the rebirth (ocean baptism) and his return to his life as a new husband, father, and partner. I think the Don we meet next will have a personality somewhere between the two extremes...or, he will have made a few more decisions on that journey...

Wow, thanks Dry for asking the question and thanks Greytone for your insightful answer.

I was going to reply that the pressure of living a lie shattered his fragil sense of self. He thought the new persona would set him free from the past, but it imprisoned him in a state of emotional solitary confinement.

Greytone nailed it and made it crystal clear.

The personality change for Don was the addition of a smile Don got by talking to Anna. What a great girl she is and I think it was just what Don needed to get his life back on track! Cheers to Anna!! ;o)

......greytone love you too... pass it on.

No doubt Draper and his prisoners are on a rocky journey. Thank goodness he has some notion of salvation.

He very much needed Rachel to tell him just what she did at the time she did it....she's a wise one.

I keep thinking the boys in this are that same timid Dick Whitman, from the Depression-era scenes...(aka The Hobo Code, which I dearly love)...

Is that a coincidence?

I think Dick has gotten a little too comfortable in the persona of Don Draper, the man who lives like there is no tomorrow, because there isn't one. He has been reckless. He figured he could have his cake and eat it too, but it has caught up with him. And now it is time for the reality check, the foreshadowing of which we saw in episode 1 season 2 when Don is coughing in the doctor's office and Betty is serving him salt free meat loaf. Anna, the wise one, did not let him take Don's identity so he could screw around and be a failure. She gave it to him so he could excel and reach the American dream.

what on earth has happened SINCE being in love with fiance Betty that would make Don Draper so dark, nihlistic and self-destructive?

Very simple, actually: the advertising world happened to him! Honestly, look at that world:

(1) Corrupting Youth: It encouraged him--required him, if you will--to be hedonistic, to drink, have affairs in order to fit in with the bosses and clients and keep his job and move up the ladder (in order to be with the guys and in with the clients, Peggy had to go to the burlesque, remember, no matter how she felt about that). That healthy, happy young man has been lost in liquor and women--and maybe one of his first affairs was not because he wanted to cheat on Betty, but because this frat house of advertising demanded he do it in order for him to get a job. The job required him to give up being a naive young man.

(2) Corrupted adulthood: In concert with #1, is what he also got when he finally reached a position where he was making the rules of the frat house rather than having to follow them. So now he's in power and can have things the way he wants...but when a man can have anything and everything he wants, he can grow jaded with it. The beautiful women no longer awe him, the fancy restaurants are no longer special. When he was young, it was all amazing. Now it's old hat. He's seen it all, done it all. What's left to be amazed by?

(3) No Fairytale ending: Don' has always believed, as we Americans do, that if we just have that new car, or get that perfect movie star into our bedroom, or have that outfit or stay at that hotel or belong to that country club or have that wife, that house, those kids...we'll be happy. Everything will be perfect forever and ever. He was the poor Cinderella who got to marry the princess and live in the castle. But as he found out, there is no happily ever after. Life isn't like that. And realizing it, after so many years of believing in fairytales, can turn one into a real cynic.

(3) It's the ADVERTISING business! :-D Don says it in episode #1: he's the one who invents the love that everyone wants to experience. It's like a man who is in love with the movies, who wants to be in a movie, live his life as if it were a movie...taking a job making movies. He gets to see that it's all fake. He gets to see that the beautiful sets are cardboard, the beautiful women are awful people, the writers are drunks, the directors are horrible tyrants. He gets to see that his dreamland is all a lie.

But instead of finding a new dream that might be real, he goes to work creating those very lies, knowing that they're lies and that people believe them and trust them. He can't drop his love of the lie even though he knows it's all fake and false. Like him. All fake and false.

How much more nihilistic can it get? That would certainly leave me dark and cynical.

Dick/Don is really a mirror what happened to America in that decade. Some people tried to "Get Back to the Garden" and some tried to get out from under the cynicism and lies that they had been told and to find an authentic life. Some tried to literally live the life of Jesus that they had learned in Sunday School. Some tried living the life of the American pioneers they saw in the movies. Some chased the "American Dream" 'which turned out to be crass materialism and a sure-fire recipe for unhappiness. Some turned away from that, some are still embracing it. The story is an allegory and a map of how we got here. "The past is prologue."

thanks all, for these great comments - Dick/Don has been on a downward spiral fueled by his self-loathing.
formerWRG'er, I really like how you stated that living a lie has shattered his fragile sense of self. and that it hasn't set him free, only imprisoned him further - wow, so true! the longer he's lived this lie, the more he behaves out of his own self loathing. this informs everything, in terms of his behavior. he behaves with an automatic self sabotage, because in some way, he doesn't feel worthy of really having a second chance.
also, like what so many ppl here have said, the lifestyle he leads, is, in and of itself, really corrupting. it's really sort of fitting that advertising [lie! cheat! steal!] is where he's made his home. [I say this with no disrespect to anyone in that field!] but for him, it is exactly where someone with a bruised and shaky foundation can buy into the Big Lie.

I think, also, that Dick didn't know what the American Dream really was, until he went into the army and was exposed to a bigger world than he had seen on the farm. it seems as if his upbringing was sheltered, and unhappy, of course, and he wanted nothing more than to get out, but I don't think his wants took on a face, as it were, until he met the real Draper and saw the possibility of a new start. he found out what he was supposed to want, and that's what he strove for and achieved. but I suspect that it's not something he chose, out of his real self. he still doesn't know what he wants, without his wants having been dictated by the culture of a fast paced corporate world.

one other thing, and please excuse me for going on so long, is that I really think that Don/Dick is the true romantic of this whole show. he's idealistic, wants to see the best in ppl, but doesn't. what's a cynic, anyway, but a disappointed idealist, really?

Hi fellow Maddicts!
I love the kinder, gentler Dick in those flashbacks.

Dick/Don has had his sensitive moments at SC, and they were not rewarded.
Remember Roger telling Don to "take off the dress" when Don made a comment that sounded sensitive?

I think he had to be tough, ruthless, in the ad world to survive. But, now we know his real persona.

hagan...
I enjoyed your post and agree the 'shattered self' Don is trying to put together is actually Dick's future. Because little Dicky dared not dream a way out of his meager circumstances, he couldn't choose a direction to make his first step when the opportunity presented himself.

Different from you, I don't feel the real Draper showed him what to 'want' because he didn't know him that long. Dick took advantage of the explosion to get out of the military. The door to the new Don began the minute he left the military. For the very first time, he was on his own and could direct his own steps. He began his journey with all the decisions and choices the 'real' Don had previously made...ie, high school graduate, college graduate, engineering degree, military career, leadership roles, marriage.

What we are seeing now is a man who stepped into another man's custom made suit now making note of all the areas where it doesn't fit. Don is stretching his arms to get a sense of how long his suit sleeves should be, he's noticing the pants he's wearing are too long and he's choosing his own colors. He wants to be himself.

I think the person with the most influence on his dreams and aspirations is someone we haven't met yet. The hobo gave him his personal moral code. I believe Anna gave his him confidence, stability and security. We've seen both backstories, but we've not yet met the italian man he was working for when he met Betty.

I am excited to see how the writers fill in the gaps...