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and the trip to Niagara Falls, he reiterated this impulse, and his
hosts indicated their willingness to help. Then comes the following
passage from Clark's biography.
Two visitors who knew the area well were assigned to accom–
pany him. "They started the climb up a rather gentle hill," says
a relative of one, "and had not gone very far before they were
greeted by the stench of carrion . As they proceeded, the stench
grew steadily stronger, so much so that . . . [someone
1
sug–
gested that they turn and go downward. Freud refused. They
continued and at last came upon a bloated porcupine, long
dead. Freud approached it, cautiously stuck his staff into it,
then turned and announced, 'It's dead.' "
There seems to have been no time for a further search, and
Freud's ambition was therefore only half, and rather miserably,
fulfilled. However, there was a minor consolation when, before
he left, the Putnams presented him with a small porcupine
paperweight made of metal .
It
was to sit on his desk for the rest
of his life .
I confess to a weakness when it comes to odd or funny stories
about great men. I confess even to a mild interest in knowing that in
addition to writing paper, leather manuscript folders, and antiqui–
ties Freud had an American metal porcupine on his desk. But the
incident about the porcupine itself is a pure and uninflected nul–
lity-the biographical equivalent of a brick made without straw.
Clark found the material in a little article published in the
Harvard
Medical Alumni Bulletin
in 1972, and the only reason for including this
incident in his biography is that it actually happened. Which means
that there is no reason at all.
It
would be misleading to say that all, or even most, of the new
material included by Clark exists at the same dead level of nonin–
terest as the rotting porcupine; but there is enough matter of this
kind so that making a point of remarking on it is not irrelevant. Of
greater cogency are Clark's various accounts of the different phases
of the history of the psychoanalytic movement, of the bitterness,
resentfulness, and epidemic uncivil behavior that has characterized
so much of the inner history of this peculiar sect of modern thera–
pists of the spirit.
In
a related connection, Clark has performed a
very useful service in writing an original historical account of
Freud's early reception in Great Britain and the subsequent ups and
