William Thetford was an American psychologist, medical psychologist and professor.
16 Facts About William Thetford
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William Thetford is best known for his collaboration with Helen Schucman in typing the original manuscript and being on the editing team for A Course in Miracles, a self-study curriculum in spiritual psychology.
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William Thetford died in 1988, aged 65, in Tiburon, California, after having made his involvement with the ACIM material and its study the most central focus of his life.
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William Thetford spent 1954 and 1955 as the director of clinical psychology at The Institute of Living in Hartford, Connecticut.
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From 1960 to 1964, William Thetford received several research grants from the Human Ecology Fund, a CIA funding front used for Project MKULTRA.
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For example, in 1961, William Thetford was researcher in Subproject 130 that explored the relationship between personality dimensions and clinical symptoms using the Wechsler intelligence scales.
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Some sources claim that William Thetford was involved in Project MKUltra from 1971 to 1978.
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Schucman appears to have confided her experiences with William Thetford, who acted as a sort of a calming, encouraging and stabilizing influence for Schucman during this period.
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William Thetford encouraged Schucman to do what the voice asked, and to take the notes.
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William Thetford offered to meet with her the next morning before work, to review her notes, to discuss them further with her, and then to determine what she should do with this "Voice".
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From 1965 through 1972 William Thetford directly assisted Schucman with the transcription of the first three sections of the work, which was in fact the great bulk of the material.
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In 1978, William Thetford resigned from his positions at both Columbia University and at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital.
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Now in Tiburon at age 57, William Thetford transitioned into a sort of semi-retirement, no longer accepting any demanding positions of heavy responsibility in either his professional life or in his involvement with the ever growing readership of ACIM.
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In California, William Thetford took on two part-time professional positions; one as a psychology consultant at Travis Air Force Base and the other as one of the directors of the ACIM-related Center for Attitudinal Healing in Tiburon, as offered to him by his friend and fellow student of ACIM, Gerald Jampolsky.
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In California, William Thetford spent the final eight years of his life regularly attending meetings of fellow ACIM students where ACIM principles would be discussed, but only rarely engaging in these discussions in any kind of an authoritative manner.
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On July 4,1988, at age 65, William Thetford died of a massive heart attack.