Beth Lipsmeyer, Ph.D.
Founder of Comprehensive Consulting Services | Consulting Psychologist
For four decades, Beth has brought clinical insight, spiritual depth, and uncommon intuition to her work with religious communities and their leaders. Her current focus is selective consultation with individuals, elected leaders, and leadership teams.
A life of insight and service
Beth Lipsmeyer founded Comprehensive Consulting Services in 1985. Ted Dunn joined her the following year, beginning a professional partnership that has continued for four decades. Together, they developed an approach to consultation grounded in sound psychology, spiritual depth, organizational understanding, and respect for the lived experience of religious communities.
A former Sister of Mercy and a clinical psychologist, Beth has spent her career at the intersection of psychology and religious life. She received her master’s degree from Loyola University Chicago and her doctorate in clinical psychology from Saint Louis University, with additional training in primary prevention and community and organizational psychology.
Her work has included psychotherapy, psychological assessment, leadership consultation, organizational development, and formation. She has accompanied women’s and men’s religious communities, dioceses, healthcare organizations, leadership teams, and individuals facing difficult personal and institutional transitions. She has also led workshops throughout the United States and Canada on leadership, communication, adult development, conflict, loss, intimacy, burnout, mental health, and spirituality.
Beth brings to this work a rare combination of clinical insight, intuition, candor, and compassion. She understands the inner life of individuals as well as the complicated emotional currents that move beneath the surface of communities and leadership teams. She has an uncommon ability to listen beyond the presenting question and recognize what may be asking for attention underneath it. Her counsel is practical, perceptive, and shaped by long experience.
Consultation in a new season
In this season of her work, Beth has stepped away from extensive travel and from facilitating chapters and large community gatherings. Her focus is now more personal and selective: consultation with individuals, elected leaders, leadership teams, and others carrying significant responsibility within religious life. Most consultations take place by Zoom, allowing her to offer thoughtful, focused accompaniment without the demands of a full travel and facilitation schedule.
Beth is especially available to those navigating leadership pressures, personal or vocational transitions, community conflict, questions of psychological and spiritual integration, and decisions that require both clear thinking and an attentive inner life. She provides a confidential setting in which people can speak honestly, sort through complexity, and listen more carefully to their own wisdom.
This is a natural evolution of Beth’s work. The scale is smaller and the pace more deliberate.