An Interview with Clifford Scott

This interview took place September 21 and 22, 1990 in Westmont, Montreal, Canada. My plane was delayed so I arrived in Toronto several hours later. I called Dr. Scott immediately upon deplaning. He invited me to come on to his home and seemed relaxed during his interview. At eighty-six, he was gracious, interesting, and interested. He had recovered completely from lung cancer, suffered some years earlier, and was still driving his four-wheel-drive vehicle and later picked me up at my hotel to take me to his club. His conversation reveals his wide range of interests. The next morning he had prepared a continental breakfast and seemed to enjoy discussing my case. He lives in a lovely, well kept home with his second wife who was away caring for her ill mother. He had amazing vigor combined with old world graciousness.

Virginia Hunter: I would like to hear the story of how you came to be a psychoanalyst.

Clifford Scott: I grew up in a small village in Canada where my father was a clergyman, so I was an exceptional boy in the town, in the sense that I was the only minister's son; and minister's sons are supposed to be different just as ministers are supposed to be different. I lived across the street from a doctor, a general practitioner, and his wife, who had no children. I spent as much time with them as I did at home, till I went to school at seven. I left the little village for high school at the Parkdale Collegiate in Toronto, where I continued until I matriculated and went to medical school. I wanted to be a mathematician and a scientist. My father didn't know about math, but he did know about medicine. He was rather a frustrated doctor I think. He liked the sick rather than the well or the troubled rather than the untroubled. And after three years in

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medicine, I wasn't so interested, and I went into pure science — anatomy — for a couple of years. Then experience led me to be a bit depressed, and I went back to medicine to become a psychiatrist and an analyst. Whe