Person Profile: Michael Dunn, PhD
Lauri Yablick, PhD
I first noticed Michael Dunn a few years ago at the American Association of Spinal Cord Injury Psychologists and Social Workers’s (AASCIPSW) annual conference where he was rousing a little rabble with an ill-timed public complaint about accessibility at the Riviera Hotel. I never knew why the timing was off, and maybe that was a faulty assumption, but Dunn was cheerfully contentious, the receiving party was piqued, and I began seeking opportunities for a conversation with him.
Last year, during a “doom and gloom” quality-of-life talk, one of my favorite association hecklers mentioned that he liked to sit where he could watch Dunn’s reaction to those sorts of presentations. Later, Dunn approached me to suggest a couple of association members who would be interesting to profile. Excellent choices, but naturally I took it as an invitation to interview him. He refused, I wheedled, he relented, and it went mostly downhill from there.
Dunn is surprisingly, arrestingly, decidedly . . . normal. I had been told otherwise and went digging, and found almost nothing titillating. The eventual disclosure of that “almost” will doubtless alienate some members with more professional or delicate sensibilities. Salvation.
I mentioned the Riviera accessibility exchange and Dunn remembered it immediately. “I posted a map to the back route through the kitchen on the list serve,” he told me. He seemed glad this was what caught my attention. “I like to be provocative. Psychologists and social workers tend to be a little too much a part of the establishment, especially psychologists. Social workers are better trained for activism.”
Turns out Mr. Provocative has had the same job for over a quarter century, has made major professional contributions without fanfare, and is described by his colleagues as a “warm, sensitive, and loving person.”
Dunn was tracking toward a career in academia when he broke his back. “I was told in high school that I should be an experimental psychologist and most of my undergraduate psychology professors were learning theorists,” he said. “I was working on my dissertation when I was injured and I had all of my data with me at the hospital. I started thinking about rehab in terms of learning theory and decided I wanted to do clinical research in spinal cord injury (SCI) rehabilitation.”
He finished up at the University of Tennessee and completed a two-year postdoctoral fellowship to become a clinician. “I spent the first six months at the Tucson VA working under George Hohmann. He was a great influence both personally and professionally.”
From Tucson, Dunn went to the Milwaukee, WI, VA, Long Beach, CA, VA and then Miami, FL, for several years. Along the way he was exposed to some of the Humanistic influences then newly in vogue, but his behavioral roots persisted. “I’m still pretty Skinnerian in my approach and think in terms of reinforcement schedules. I started out applying that to my work with individuals; now I focus more on the milieu.”
In 1978, Dunn landed at the Palo Alto, CA, VA and took root. He embodies the scientist-practitioner model, publishing and presenting steadily throughout his career, while working primarily as a clinician. “I have had a very varied professional life in the midst of dealing with just one kind of patient. My interest in spinal cord injury was maintained by doing many different things.”
He made his early mark in social skills assessment and training and was a force in shaping the VA’s protocol for mental health services for SCI rehabilitation. Videos he made in the late 1970s are still in use. His work has also covered subjects ranging from life satisfaction to cartoons, biofeedback to sexuality, but with threads of consistency. Like his clinical interests, his writing has drifted more toward systems than individual interventions, with more recent publications on topics like team functioning, staff perceptions and training.
Dunn was a founding member of AASCIPSW, one of just two dozen or so. He took his turn as vice-president and then president of the Board of Directors in the early years of the association and has managed to continue his contributions in every imaginable capacity. He was a consulting editor to this publication for several years, has published and presented frequently, and had overlapping roles on the professional issues and membership committees for several years. In 1998, Dunn was honored with the Essie Morgan Award for Clinical Excellence. “I’ve profited from the collegial interaction and feedback from my peers,” Dunn said. “I still have ideas about what we should do as an organization, but I’ve had enough influence to feel happy about our development.”
Surely we’re a favorite child, but Dunn has also been active in other professional organizations. He is a fellow of the Rehabilitation Psychology Division of the American Psychological Association and has served as consulting editor or reviewer for a host of professional journals.
Some rabble rouser.
One of the tricks to writing these profiles has been identifying association members who know the subject and grilling them for a little background. I find it’s usually easier to get people to tell interesting stories about others than about themselves. The exciting news is that, for the first time, I’ve been asked to protect a source. A little plagiarism and I’ll be ready for the big leagues.
The tale dates back to one of the first annual AASCIPSW conferences in Las Vegas, NV. Even if he were not as widely known as he is among our membership, enough time has passed for fading memories to protect the bystanders, innocent or otherwise.
“A bunch of us went to Bally’s one evening to catch their big show,” said the player, who shall remain nameless. “We were waiting in a long line to be admitted to the show when one of the attendants noticed that Michael was in a wheelchair. He instructed our group to follow him and proceeded to take us through some back entrance where we ended up in the front row, directly below the stage.
“One of the acts of the show was a chorus line of topless dancers. Michael really got into this and made a number of comments to the dancers about their anatomy (e.g., size of body parts, etc.). Needless to say, we were so close they could hear him. The more comments he made, the more visibly annoyed the dancers right in front of us became. This all climaxed at the end of their act in one or two of the dancers spitting on Michael as they ended their routine. This didn’t bother Michael. Actually, he got a big kick out of it. Now, what this has to do with any thing is beyond me, but it still puts a smile on my face.”
There’s hope for this guy yet.
Lauri Yablick, PhD, is with Southwest Neuropsychology Associates in Tucson, Arizona.