Richard M. Waugaman majored in Philosophy and received his A.B. from Princeton University in 1970. His M.D. was from Duke University School of Medicine in 1973. He did his psychiatric residency at Sheppard-Pratt Hospital in Towson, MD from 1973-76. He graduated from the Washington Psychoanalytic Institute in 1984, and has been a Training & Supervising Analyst Emeritus there since 2001.

His publications began in 1973 with an article on Nietzsche's influence on Freud. His subsequent publications in psychiatry and psychoanalysis have ranged over a variety of topics, including cognitive psychology, neuroscience, psychoanalytic education, clinical psychoanalysis, professional ethics, religion, dissociative disorders, transferences to fellow patients, time, the analytic couch, the meaning of names, dreams, and countertransference.

Since 2002, most of his publications have shifted to English literature and the Shakespeare authorship question. The founder of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, was the first prominent intellectual to endorse the theory that Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford (1550-1604) was the true author of Shakespeare's canon. Waugaman's research has led him to publish articles attributing several anonymous works to de Vere/Shakespeare. Another area of interest is Biblical allusions in the works of Shakespeare.