Laffoley wrote that his first spoken word was "Constantinople" at the age of six months. He did not speak again until he was four years old. He was diagnosed as having Asperger's Syndrome testing both high and low academically. According to Laffoley, he attended the progressive Mary Lee Burbank School in Belmont, Massachusetts, where his draftsman's talent was ridiculed by his abstract expressionist teachers. After further studies at the Waldorf School, Laffoley would complete undergraduate studies at Brown University, graduating in 1961 with honors in classics, philosophy, and art history. As written by Paul in The Phenomenology of Revelation, he was given eight electroshock treatments after the termination of "about a year of weekly sessions with a psychiatrist, who had treated me for a mild state of catatonia" while at Brown in 1961.