I have a close friend. Perhaps my best friend, who is an astoundingly bad judge of character. She seems unable to judge people's true motivations in a majority of cases.

The reason I find this worth mentioning and fairly interesting, is that she is a mental health counselor. Time after time, she has made declarations about situations and people that in the end, turn out to be patently, well, jacked up, for lack of a better descriptive. Always the details and issues on which she focuses, which she assumes are important qualities of said situations or people, I immediately reject as implausible or naive. This has happened in work situations and in personal situations because after all she is my girl and often we give each other advice on various issues in our lives, be they personal or professional.

What I've always found perplexing is that she is always wrong about outcomes and motivations (and by the way, I am usually right). It seems that a counselor, an individual charged with helping others find their way would have a keen sense of these sorts of things.

Upon recent reflexion, however--I have lots of time on my hands lately, what can I say?--what I've determined is that as a counselor, her job is not to determine motivations but rather to help her patient figure them out for themselves. So, being somewhat unattuned to human behavior would be less of an issue.

It still doesn't make sense to me but maybe?

Yes. I have too much time on my hands...