“Success in the academic world requires effective teaching, research and publication.”
Member of Adelphi University’s Profiles in Success program.
Psychologist, Retired Professor of Clinical Psychology
Author
Adelphi memories: “The sixties and seventies were turbulent times, and we brought that cultural interplay into the classroom. It really enlivened the experience.”
Advice for Derner students: “Success in the academic world requires effective teaching, research and publication.”
Psychologist, Professor, and Author
William Herron, an avid writer, came to the Derner Institute looking for a particular discourse he found lacking in his professional life.
“I was teaching at the college level, and had a private practice,” he says. “But, at the time, my academic world didn’t really offer psychoanalytic colleagues. I missed the interaction.”
He came to Adelphi at the recommendation of a colleague, and indeed found the stimulating experience he had been imagining. For four years, he commuted to Garden City from northern New Jersey every Friday evening.
“It was a grueling trip,” he recalls. “But, I found connections with other professionals that have lasted for years. We even formed a peer supervisory group that has lasted for 20 years; we helped each other and presented papers together.”
Dr. Herron’s career has taken him to several institutions of higher education throughout New York. After completing a bachelor’s degree at Holy Cross College without taking one psychology course, he earned his Ph.D. from Fordham University. A one-year position at Manhattanville College helped shift his interest to clinical psychology. The following year, he interned at St. Vincent’s hospital and gathered data for his dissertation.
After that, he accepted an invitation to build a psychology program at St. Bonaventure University in southwestern New York. Over six years, he came to deeply appreciate the joint opportunities of a private practice and an academic career.
Dr. Herron returned to the New York area in 1965, and continued his career as an administrator and a professor at St. John’s University. He served as the Director of the School Psychology Program and the founding coordinator of the Clinical Psychology Ph.D. Program. At St. John’s he also lived through the first university teacher strike in the nation.
A devoted writer, Dr. Herron has published ten books. His first, on process reactive schizophrenia brought him to California for one year to work on a new compilation. His most recent was published in 2006. Through it all, he has never abandoned his early dream of becoming a novelist.
He wrote his first novel a few years ago, and is currently pursuing a publisher. Dr. Herron also writes a column called “The Weekender” in a local paper on Shelter Island, where he and his wife maintain their vacation home.
Dr. Herron lives in Woodcliff Lake, New Jersey with his wife Mary Jane, a marital and family therapist. In the near future, his practice may grow to include one more family member, his daughter, a 3rd year resident in psychiatry. Dr. Herron’s other daughter is a practicing attorney in New York.
For further information, please contact:
Todd Wilson
Strategic Communications Director
p – 516.237.8634
e – twilson@adelphi.edu