200 | Leadership and Advocacy in Neuropsychology – A Conversation With Dr. Antonio Puente

I do wanna comment in general on this idea that there's a standardized or linear path to becoming a neuropsychologist.

You know, to be a neuropsychologist, the thinking goes you should be born and educated at least a neuropsychologist in the United States.

You should be born and educated here.

You major in psychology.

You get into grad school and clinical psych, neuropsych concentration, internship, post-doc in neuropsychology.

You know, it can feel like there's this well-worn and very specific path, and that is what we must do.

Of course, that's, that's not accurate and not true.

Uh, many people come to our specialty through other pathways, and we wanna encourage that.

I'm wondering how you feel like we're doing in supporting people from varying backgrounds to pursue neuropsychology in the US and what we could improve on.

Yeah, well, maybe we'll talk about the Minnesota conference, but I'll, I'll start with, uh, with my, my first line in that conference.

I was the lead speaker, and I start, [chuckles] I started with, "I, Antonio Puente- Had made history in clinical neuropsychology.

[laughs] It was like, God, when, when Eric and SOP has said, "I am the first person to take the ABPP exam in neuropsychology and flunk."

Oh.

[laughs]

[laughs] So, so no, no, I did not do anything the way you should.

You know, from, from high school to PhD in six years, no internship.

[laughs] You know, my postdoc was with, well, Paul Satz's student from University of Florida, but, you know, he, he went bipolar on me, and I basically had to do it all on my own, and it just...

No, no, it's not good.

I wrote a, a chapter many years ago, about in the early '90s, uh, that, that I, I think that sometimes not following the, the, the standard paths, in fact, I wrote a chapter called "Unconventional Path in, uh, Becoming a Neuropsychologist," and, uh, sometimes it's really good because it, it allows you to be outside of the, the standard approaches, and, uh, sometimes it's easy to, you know, if you're really successful, to add a rung in a ladder, but sometimes when you come out of nowhere like I did, uh, you, you end up maybe, uh, not by design, uh, maybe by luck and, and more like by pressure, you, you build ladders.

Uh, and I'll...

That I'm more than happy to explain that as we go through some of the other issues, especially with advocacy.

But the flip side is I did it all wrong.

But let me tell you where, who my two mentors were when it's all said.

One was Alexander Luria and the people from his lab.

I was one of the first Westerners to get to his lab back in the early '90s, again, by luck and serendipity, among other things, and that really just shaped my thinking in neuropsychology.