As a trained psychotherapist I've been interested in watching Ali and also reading comments on her.
Someone upthread commented on her lack of warmth. Being warm might be very useful for a counsellor but in some branches of psychotherapy it is actively discouraged. My MSc was in psychodynamic practice and we were supposed to present to our clients/patients as a blank slate. I had previously trained as a counsellor and was occasionally critiqued by my tutors/cohort for being too warm in my approach and advised to remove 'warm' from my CV. Warmth in a psychoanalytic setting might be deemed manipulative or coercive.
Ali is a forensic psychologist so her job involves assessing prisoners /offenders/people awaiting trial and diagnosing any mental health conditions they may have. She might then recommend a style of treatment to the mental health team in the appropriate institution but she is unlikely to actually carry out the day to day or week to week treatment herself. She might stay in touch with things through team meetings but ongoing personal contact with the patient will be minimal.
The very nature of her job means she will be working with dysfunctional people on the very edge of society after day after day. That's bound to give her a jaundiced view of people and their motivations!
It struck me that part of Ali's job will be giving her professional opinion to courts, prison managers and parole boards and usually this will be listened to and respected. I did an internship counselling in a prison and among the mental health team the psychologists word was law. It took a very determined mental health nurse to ever change their mind once a diagnosis had been made even though the nurse would by then have much more experience with the patient than the psychologist . They just aren't used to underlings disagreeing with them and that attitude comes across loud and clear with Ali who clearly considers herself the intellectual superior of the house and finds it hard to tolerate dissension.
And anyone who thinks that psychologists/psychiatrists/psychotherapists are more socially adept and less prone to bitchiness or backbiting has clearly never been to one of their professional conferences. The ones I attended were always a seething mess of gossip, rivalries and infighting. The academic side was often enlightening but not nearly as much so as the coffee breaks, lunches and drinks parties!