False Self: The Life of Masud Khan

Tall, handsome, rich and eccentric, Masud Khan was a striking figure in London psychoanalytic circles during the 1960s and '70s. The Muslim Punjabi was, Hopkins says, the "principal disciple" of the great British psychoanalyst D.W. Winnicott. "The two men were a study in contrasts," writes Hopkins, a clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst. She intricately dissects their father-son/analyst-analysand relationship, showing how Winnicott may have failed to address the pathological traits that ultimately destroyed his protégé. Khan flourished in London for many years, socially, personally and professionally, gaining an international reputation as a psychoanalytic theorist. But he ended his life in deep disgrace, a lonely alcoholic who had been ousted by the British Psycho-Analytical Society for inappropriate social relationships with analysands, and he authored an anti-Semitic tract. Hopkins draws on Khan's extensive journals and correspondence, while quoting from fascinating, often paradoxical accounts by Khan's colleagues, patients, friends and former girlfriends. Hopkins draws on thousands of letters and scores of interviews to bring to life a charismatic, cultured, brilliant, immature, and ultimately unbalanced individual. This thoroughly researched and well-written life is essential for psychotherapists and historians of the rise and decline of post-World War II psychoanalysis. Hopkins deftly handles a large treasure of material, including interviews with Khan's colleagues, friends, patients, and wives. Depicting the complex impact on Khan of his opulent Indian upbringing, of Winnicott's death in 1971 and of Khan's divorce from star ballerina Svetlana Beriosa, whose drinking probably worsened his own alcoholism, Hopkins offers an unnerving and sympathetic portrait of the enfant terrible of postwar British psychoanalysis and suggests that Khan suffered from undiagnosed bipolar disorder, a suggestion that probably does not take us very far since labels provide little information about the influence of psychodynamics, personal history, motivations and defences.