Autobiographies
HELEN'S LINKS: Biography | Curriculum
Vitae | Significant
Dates | Autobiography
Bio by
Ken Wapnick
Interview with Helen | Helen's
Poetry
BILL'S LINKS: Biography | Curriculum
Vitae | Significant
Dates | Autobiography
| Interview
with Bill | Memorial
Service
Preface Biographical Sketch
Dr. William Newton Thetford
William Newton Thetford was born into a midwestern middle-class family on April 25, 1923, in Chicago, Illinois, and grew up on the city's south side. He was the youngest of three children and the only one to survive childhood.
Bill's exposure to religion was erratic as a child. Until age seven, he attended Sunday school of the Christian Science Church where his parents were members. But following the death of his sister when he was seven, his parents renounced their church affiliation, after which Bill attended a variety of Protestant churches – Presbyterian, Methodist, Congregational – until his adolescence.
It was also during this period that Bill developed a severe case of scarlet fever, leading to rheumatic fever and a serious heart condition. He spent three years recuperating at home tutored by his mother. He also read voraciously. Despite his absence from the classroom, Bill entered high school at age twelve. Following graduation from high school, he was awarded a four-year scholarship to DePauw University in Indiana where he graduated with majors in psychology and pre-medicine.
Bill was subsequently accepted at the University of Chicago's Medical School for the class of 1944. To help support himself and before classes began, he also accepted a job at the University's Metallurgical Laboratory, which turned out to be a code name for the atomic bomb research program secretly labeled The Manhattan Project. There he served as an administrative liaison officer between the scientific community and the university administration. Because of the great sense of national urgency, he canceled plans for entering medical school and continued to work at the Metallurgical Laboratory until the atomic bomb was dropped in August 1945, ending World War II.
The following month, Bill began graduate studies in psychology at the University of Chicago, serving also as a teaching and research assistant to Dr. Carl Rogers, the noted psychologist. After receiving his doctorate in psychology in 1949 he worked as a research psychologist at Michael Reese Hospital in Chicago. In 1951 Bill became a staff psychologist with the Central Intelligence Agency in Washington, D.C., and also attended the Washington School of Psychiatry there. Three years later, in 1954, he was named Director of the Psychology Department at the Institute of Living in Hartford, Connecticut. The following year he accepted a research appointment at Cornell University Medical College, where he remained for three years working with Dr. Harold Wolff, a world-renowned neurologist and one of the founders of psychosomatic medicine. In 1958 Bill was offered and subsequently accepted a professorship at Columbia University in New York City as Professor of Medical Psychology in the College of Physicians and Surgeons, and as Director of the Psychology Department at Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center.
That same year Bill hired Dr. Helen Schucman as a research psychologist. Helen soon became a steadfast friend and copartner in attempting to develop and strengthen the Center's Psychology Department and in the many other responsibilities they shared. Yet Helen's overtly critical and judgmental stance was in marked contrast to Bill's quiet and more passively aggressive personality, and they often clashed. Their personality differences – as well as the angry, competitive atmosphere that pervaded their Department – permeated and affected their professional lives, prompting Bill to eventually address it in a serious, heart-to-heart talk with Helen. He insisted "there must be another way" to live in harmony rather than conflict and was determined to find it. Helen agreed to help. Their joining together in this healing process served as the catalyst for Helen to hear and take dictation from an inner Voice that began with: "This is a course in miracles, please take notes."
As Helen's trusted friend and colleague, Bill acted as transcriber of A Course in Miracles throughout the entire process by typing the material from the scribed notes that Helen took down and would dictate to him almost daily. He also assisted, supported and encouraged Helen throughout her scribing and completion of the Course – including the events that led up to it – continuing with this supportive role until her death. When once asked what the impact A Course in Miracles had had on him, Bill said, "It has changed my life totally."
After a noted and distinguished career in psychology, Bill retired from Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center in 1977, and moved to Tiburon, California – later to La Jolla. He devoted the remainder of his life to studying and practicing A Course in Miracles, and to helping others in using Course concepts and principles by teaching and demonstrating them. Bill died on July 4, 1988, during a visit to the Foundation for Inner Peace in Tiburon.
Although William Thetford did not write an autobiography of his extraordinary life and career, in a series of taped interviews with Dr. Frances Vaughan in 1982 he did discuss his life's journey and his role in the scribing of A Course in Miracles. The audiotapes are now part of the Archives of A Course in Miracles maintained by the Foundation for Inner Peace. Upon completing her interviews with Bill, however, Dr. Vaughan also transcribed the tapes as an archival question-answer printed record, titled Recollections of William Thetford, which she and Bill together edited.
While this biographical archival record of Bill sufficiently covered the essence of his life and was the first such account of its kind, a number of essential aspects and important events nevertheless were inadvertently not included. These came to light or were discovered later, including the six-year period from 1982 until his death in 1988 that also needed to be added. As a result, the fundamental material presented in Recollections of William Thetford was naturally and faithfully amplified and updated to include additional significant biographical material taken from a variety of other interviews of Bill that appear on audio and video cassettes, as well as in written form and as remembrances from friends and colleagues.
In lieu of his own authored autobiography, therefore, the following personal, biographic account of Bill's life – presented here posthumously by the Foundation for Inner Peace in a self-narrated, stylized format – is offered in the spirit and style it is felt that Bill himself would have penned it as an expanded, personal portrayal of life and career, especially regarding his essential and vital part in the scribing of A Course in Miracles.
You will be able to purchase the electronic
publications of the
Autobiography of Dr. Helen Schucman
and the
Autobiography of Dr. William Thetford in the
near future.
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