The Book

This is the definitive biography of one of the most engaging figures of British psychoanalysis. M. Masud R. Khan (1924-1989) exposed through his candour and scandalous behaviour the bigotry of his proponents turned detractors. Khan's subsequent downfall, which is powerfully narrated in this biography, offers interesting insights not only into Khan's psychic fragility but into the world of intrigues and deceptions pervasive in the psychoanalytic community of the time.

The son of a wealthy landowner in rural India (now Pakistan), Khan grew up in a world of privilege that was radically different from the Western lifestyle he would adopt after moving to London. Notorious for his flamboyant personality and, at first, widely acknowledged as a brilliant clinician, Khan was closely connected to some of the most creative and accomplished individuals of his time, including Donald Woods Winnicott, Anna Freud, Robert Stoller, Michael Redgrave, Julie Andrews, Rudolph Nureyev, and many more.

In telling the story of this provocative man, Linda Hopkins makes use of unprecedented access to a complete copy of Khan's unpublished Work Books, which are quoted extensively. Additionally, she conducted innumerable interviews with Khan's peers, relatives, and analysands in order to provide an indepth and balanced account of Masud Khan as a talented and deeply conflicted individual.

"Sensible, intelligent, scrupulously researched, and clear as a bell. This is an important biography....an extraordinary and successful attempt to get Khan's larger-than-life character into ordinary human proportions, where he becomes a flawed man living a flawed life. This is not a book to give to relatives for Christmas. It is something to discuss with colleagues, as many of them as you can." - Bob Hinshelwood, Ph.D.

The Speaker

Linda B. Hopkins, Ph.D (Clinical Psychology), psychoanalyst (Philadelphia School of Psychoanalysis and the National Association for the Advancement of Psychoanalysis; former President of the Philadelphia Society of Psychoanalytic Psychology. Further publications include Writing lives and hearing lives: A comparison of biographical and psychoanalytic processes. (2005: presented at the winter meeting of the American Psychoanalytic Association in New York City).