Current Practice
Dr. Ted Dunn
Dr. Ted Dunn
Dr. Ted Dunn provides consultation, facilitation and training services for Religious Communities and other value-based organizations throughout the United States, Canada and Central America. His consultation for Communities, Leadership Teams and individuals in leadership, has involved:
- Visioning and Strategic Planning;
- Mission Planning;
- Facilitation and Planning of Chapters, assemblies and workshops and discernment/election processes;
- Facilitator Training;
- Leadership Team Development;
- Training in CARE: Conversational Approach to Relational Effectiveness (i.e., a relationship model of effectiveness and systemic change);
- Keynote Speaking and Resource Development
- Coaching and Consultation and Assessments for leadership teams, and individuals in leadership, in designing and implementing systemic/organizational interventions;
- Interventions with “difficult” people and Conflict Resolution
Professional Background
Dr. Ted Dunn provides consulting, training and facilitation services to religious communities and other value-based organizations throughout the United States, Canada and Central America. He has been working with religious women and men since 1979 and sees his training and experience as particularly suited for working with religious. He works with leadership teams and congregations at all levels in variety of ways.
He facilitates and trains communities in the skills of communal discernment, contemplative listening, communications, conflict resolution and reconciliation. He regularly facilitates Chapters and assemblies and consults with leadership teams. He assists communities in strategic/pastoral planning, visioning, reconfiguring (e.g., mergers), restructuring (e.g., new models of governance), refounding and in discerning transformative options for the future. He has written extensively on religious life and regularly presents Chapters and assemblies. He and his wife, Dr. Beth Lipsmeyer, train communities in unique program they developed called CARE (Conversational Approach to Relational Effectiveness), which not only empowers members with new relational skills but also fosters reconciliation, communal transformation and new life.
The integration of spirituality, psychology and value-based skills are key to his efforts. Though the approaches and groups he has served have varied over the years, his compassionate approach to healing, belief in the natural resiliency of the human spirit, and personal commitment to life-long learning remain the foundation to all his professional endeavors. These are the bedrock to his current call to minister to religious communities, empowering them to live well and partner in co-creating the future of religious life.
Dr. Ted Dunn is a licensed clinical psychologist with experience as a consultant, facilitator, professor, psychotherapist and supervisor to professionals in the field of mental health. He obtained his undergraduate training at Ohio State University, and his Master’s and Doctoral degrees in Clinical Psychology from St. Louis University. He completed his graduate training in 1985 following his internship at Rutgers Medical School in New Jersey where he concentrated on individual psychotherapy and approaches to systemic change.
He has advanced training in psychoanalytic psychotherapy from the St. Louis Psychoanalytic Institute as well as in family therapy and systems applications from masters in the field (e.g., Jay Haley, Salvador Minuchin, Virginia Satir and Monica McGoldrick). He has extensive experience with neuropsychological and psychological assessment methods and has consulted, taught, published, developed laboratories for hospitals and served as an expert witness in these fields.