George Higgins received his BA in 1959 from Amherst College majoring in mathematics, and his PhD in Clinical Psychology from the University of Rochester in 1964.

He came to Trinity in 1963 to establish a psychological counseling service. He retired from the Counseling Center in 2000, after which he taught in the Tutorial College for three years before his retirement from Trinity.

At Trinity he specialized in older adolescent personality development with special attention to late adolescent suicidal behavior. He contributed articles on counseling college students particularly students who identified as GLBT. His teaching was in psychopathology and concepts of consciousness. In addition, he was active in the Hartford community first with the Hartford Counsel of Churches in establishing counseling centers for homosexual persons, and then in 1975 he was a founding member of the Gender Identity Clinic of New England from which he retired in 2000. He presented papers on the transsexual phenomenon to local, national and international conferences. The papers were based on psychological testing results from the 700 Clinic clients.

In retirement he is reading in areas other than those in which he worked. He is a hopeless liberal arts wonk, and he reads continuously and contrapuntally.