An Introduction to Clifford Scott: His Theory, Technique, Manner of Thinking, and Self-Expression1

By virtue of more than 60 years of clinical experience and his close professional relationships with many of the leading psychiatrists and analysts of this century, Scott is a piece of psychiatric and psychoanalytic history. He studied under Paul Schilder and Adolf Meyer, the most influential North American psychiatrist in our time. He became Melanie Klein's first analytic candidate in analysis and was one of the pioneering few who began to analyze schizophrenic and manic-depressive patients regularly. He had supervision with Klein herself, with Ernest Jones, and with Ella Sharpe. Scott analyzed Winnicott for one session and both of Winnicott's wives for a number of years. And he himself supervised a host of notable analysts, including Masud Khan. Finally, he was a—if not the—principal figure who established psychoanalysis in Canada.

Scott has further historical distinctiveness. I know of no one, from Freud to Winnicott and up to the present day, who has left such a unique record of having treated so many different kinds of fascinating and sometimes strange patients. And within that overall unique record some of the individual cases themselves are unique within the annals of psychoanalytic treatment. That record stands as a testimony of Scott's “long sitting” wakeful concern about strange clinical phenomena. He observed them,