James N. Butcher was born in West Virginia. He enlisted in the Army when he was 17 years old and served in the airborne infantry for 3 years, including a 1-year tour in Korea during the Korean War. After military service, he attended Guilford College, graduating in 1960 with a BA in psychology. He received an MA in experimental psychology in 1962 and a PhD in clinical psychology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

He was awarded Doctor Honoris Causa from the Free University of Brussels, Belgium, in 1990 and an honorary doctorate from the University of Florence, Florence, Italy in 2005. He is currently professor emeritus in the Department of Psychology at the University of Minnesota. He was associate director and director of the clinical psychology program at the university for 19 years.

He was a member of the University of Minnesota Press’s MMPI Consultative Committee, which under-took the revision of the MMPI in 1989. He was formerly the editor of Psychological Assessment, a journal of the American Psychological Association, and serves as consulting editor or reviewer for numerous other journals in psychology and psychiatry.