Dully's characterization of "the emasculating bitch" is one of the best non PC descriptions of certain women married to men who are achievement oriented people.
Sadly for the "truth" that element of his analysis will tend to be deleted in our brave new world inhabited by people afraid to speak out about why marriages fail.
Dully's film was a hell of a wake up call. He had a few sessions filmed whose intended audience was not Naval Aviators, but their spouses.
" If you want to know why your husband does what he does, you'll know but you won't be able to do much about it other than understand"
was part of his message. Most women then, and even more empowered women now, are unable to accept that truth either. The emotional blackmail of "but if you love me you'll change" still destroys marriages.
Best advice I got before marriage: You'd better like her as she is, since she's unlikely to change for anything "Better" than on the day you drive the model off the show room floor. I wish women were given that advice as well.
(Full disclosure: once married, still married, 20+ years, and with every intention of remaining so. I've seen so many marriages crash and burn among my colleagues, however, that there were times I wonder why anyone married, at all.)
Dully was was good for his time. He did a great job of describing people who he interacted with every day. Current Navy still uses "life change points" checklist as a helping tool for aircrew and Ops officers to answer the usual question:
"Should Jennings be in the cockpit today, or does he need to complete FOD walkdown in his personal life first?"
I'd say Dr Phil owes Dully a debt. Caveat: Dully didn't use the scientific method of analysis, as he had poor tools for quantifying his observations.
His analysis, however, while being labeled as "anecdotal" is certainly based on a LOT of observation. A number of my psychologist friends believe that over time, Dully started to read his own news clippings and began to belief he was preaching a new Gospel. Not a surprise, and a very human habit. It in no way diminishes the value of what he tried to alert his leadership chain to: if we don't understand our pilots, we'll keep having human factors based mishaps at rates we find unacceptable.
Last edited by Lonewolf_50; 11th Mar 2013 at 14:45.