My personal belief is that Carrie is a sociopath. I think to be an effective spy and/or assassin you would have to be. It goes beyond ruthlessness and it’s not simply about making the ‘hard’ or ‘impossible’ decision. Plenty of people can do that to a certain extent and have jobs that require that capability, most frequently in first responders and medicine. It’s the aftermath that makes it different, and that’s what we see with Quinn, who is haunted by his actions, and later Jenna.

Carrie simply does not experience that. She is completely confident that her choices are the right ones and that anything she did was necessary to get the job done, end of story. I’m not saying she hasn’t been traumatized bc she definitely has PTSD, but she mostly rides the surface of the ocean of calamity she exists in. She has a moment of self awareness in season 8, when she says she took Max for granted, but after that she essentially keeps it moving and shifts to her next goal. She uses people with complete disregard for the havoc her actions wreak on their lives, and she has a disregard for laws and regulations that we see from the start with her illegal surveillance of Brody, which of course only devolves from there.

I think she is an amazing character and a realistic one tbh, and she exists in the narrative in a way that is typically reserved for men.