ing the spring and summer of 1973. Starting in or about the fall of 1973, Wapnick and Schucman began to work together on a comprehensive editing of the entire Course, ultimately spending 13 or 14 months reviewing the manuscript, and revising its grammar, paragraphing, headings, and the like. This editing process was completed in approximately February 1975. Subsequently, Wapnick became the founder and president of FACIM and, with his wife, constitutes its executive board.
On May 29, 1975, Dr. Douglas Dean (“Dean”), a physicist engineer, introduced Schucman, Thetford and Wapnick to Judith Skutch Whitson (“Skutch Whitson”), a key witness at the trial and ultimately perhaps the principal person involved with the use and development of the Work—Schucman having died in 1981 and Thetford in 1988.
Schucman and Thetford gave Dean an uncopyrighted copy of the Course at the same time that Skutch Whitson received her copy. Dean was a stranger to both Schucman and Thetford until the May meeting. He had very little relationship with Schucman after receiving the Course, and was simply the “conduit” between Skutch Whitson and Schucman and Thetford. (Tr. Trans.2734). Skutch Whitson was a teacher and lecturer at New York University on the science of the study of consciousness and parapsychology. She also ran a small non-profit organization, then known as the Foundation for Para=Sensory Investigation (later renamed the Foundation for Inner Peace), that raised funds for and otherwise supported parapsychological studies at universities and hospitals. She was a founding board member of the Institute of Noetic Sciences in California, which had been founded by astronaut Edgar Mitchell to further the study of psychological and mystical experiences. Skutch Whitson became the Chief Executive officer of FIP and her husband Robert Skutch (“Skutch”) became its vice-president.
An empathy developed at the May 1975 luncheon meeting, and, according to Skutch Whitson, Schucman received guidance that Skutch Whitson was to play an important role in the evolution of the Course. After lunch Schucman and Thetford took Skutch Whitson to their offices where the blinds were pulled, and the door was locked. Wapnick was present. Schucman and Thetford described the process of developing the manuscript and Schucman’s embarrassment. Skutch Whitson was permitted to take the seven thesis binders home with her to review. She carried them out in a shopping bag. On the way home she called Dr. Gerald Jampolsky (“Jampolsky”), a Stanford-educated psychiatrist with whom Skutch Whitson had a romantic relationship to tell him about the Work and offered to show it to Skutch, a businessman and writer, who had been a writer for many years of television plays and advertising copy.
In or about mid-June 1975, Skutch Whitson took the manuscript with her on a trip to California in the course of which she sought the reaction of a number of people to the Work. Prior to her trip, Skutch Whitson had advised James Bolen (“Bolen”), a publisher and founder of Psychic Magazine in 1969, a publication that addressed issues relating to parapsychology, ESP, and the philosophical nature of humankind, that she had come across a very interesting manuscript that she wanted him to take a look at, and that she was coming to California in the near future. The magazine had a developed readership of approximately 100,000. Bolen frequently received manuscripts that individuals sought to have published or excerpted.
