Suits: Donna Paulsen (ESFJ)

Fe:

“I know people usually better than they know themselves.”

“If this whole thing is Jessica’s fault, maybe it’s time we considered forgiving Mike.”

“You’re weird. We’ll be friends.”

Donna is extremely emotionally intelligent and opinionated, which would be expected from a confident extraverted judging dominant. She’s extremely good at reading others, and understanding what’s going on with them emotionally. For instance, on several occasions, she notices something is up with Rachel and pinpoints the cause of the issue. Similarly, she’s often helping Harvey parse out his emotions, sometimes to his dismay. People are frequently going to her for relationship advice, and she’s often volunteering it, even in spite of their wishes. Her Fe, in this regard, is demonstrated clearly in season 3. She helps him navigate his relationship with Scottie, pick out appropriate gifts, understand why he’s reacting the way he’s reacting, deal with Mike leaving, and etc.

Donna is people-focused, and extremely loyal. On the more anecdotal side, Donna tends to know all of the office gossip, which Jessica uses against her at one point. However, moving beyond that, she tends to see her and Harvey as a single unit, which can be seen in situations where she won’t forgive someone because Harvey won’t. She also on a couple of occasions rebukes Mike for considering doing something that might threaten Harvey in some way, and typically reminds him of everything that Harvey has done for him.

Donna is prone to using emotions and drama to manipulate others. She’s shown doing this with Louis when he wants her to work for him temporarily. She breaks down into tears, and essentially scares him off. It was then that Harvey realizes that she did something similar to him to get him to let her parents stay in his condo.

Si:

“You’re wearing a blue shirt , which means you won big in poker last night. You missed a spot shaving which means you have less than five hours of sleep, and your left wrist which you claim you sprained playing basketball still hasn’t healed because your loud tie is hanging ever so slightly to the left. Loud by the way because you won big in poker last night.”

“After two cups, your signature slants, after three it scrawls, and after four it’s chicken scratch.”

While Donna is usually typed as an ENFJ, or auxiliary Ni user, she doesn’t appear to show any true signs of Ni use. She is extremely intuitive, but in the “women’s intuition” sense, and not in the Ni sense. True Ni users tend toward being vague and general. Donna is actually the exact opposite. She often ties her “intuitive” moments back to very specific, concrete observations, which points to Si use. The quotes at the top of this section are prime examples of this. Each piece of information that she happens to guess about Harvey is always connected to something she is observing. She is always easily able to explain these guesses.

Another example that’s not shown in the quotes can be seen when she hyper-focuses in on Harvey’s tie and derives multiple things from tiny details. For instance, she notices that the tie dimple is slightly to the left, so he was distracted when he put it on. She notices that it’s lavender which he wore last when his sister died. From these and other details, she derives a conclusion. This all points to Si: honing in on details, connecting them concretely back to a past event, and then using that information to draw a specific conclusion. Her ability to do this initially creeps out Harvey.

Ne:

“The computers don’t run themselves.. at least until Skynet goes active.”

Donna’s Ne tend to surface in her off-the wall humor and quick wit. She always has something to say and is frequently verbally sparring with whoever she is interacting with. She also has a tendency to connect the various things together that are going on inside the office. She tends to easily use the different details that she has picked up in order to draw conclusions. She can seemingly draw the most disconnected conclusions from the smallest indicators. These assumptions can also work against her though, like the time she destroyed documents thinking that its existence would be detrimental evidence against Harvey. In reality, Harvey reveals that if the documents existed it would have actually helped him and her impulsive decision had made everything much worse.

Ti:

There are two main ways that Donna’s inferior Ti surfaces in the show. The first is that she makes her entire life about Harvey, and struggles to do anything outside of her support role for him. This shows a low or weak sense of identity. She struggles to allow herself to get into a relationship with a lawyer from the firm that they merge with, and keeps letting her “relationship” with Harvey interfere. She even performs a criminal action for him, which ultimately backfires on the both of them.

The second way is Donna’s tendency to frequently assert her own intelligence, importance, and identity, which demonstrates what we like to call “superego” Ti. Essentially, some people get an overblown sense of their ability to use their inferior function and end up bragging excessively on it as a form of overcompensation. This is precisely what Donna does in her many comments like “I’m Donna. I know everything” and “The genius of Donna is everyday.”