 He graduated from the Medical College of Georgia (MCG) in Augusta in 1945.Thigpen then entered into the private practice of psychiatry with Dr. Hervey M. Cleckley.Together, for much of the 1940s and most of the 1950s, they comprised the Departments of Psychiatry and Neurology at MCG, being then and there the only teachers in those fields, while also maintaining their private practice.