Mohammed Masud Raza Khan (21 July 1924 – 7 June 1989) was a Pakistani-British

psychoanalyst PsychoanalysisFrom Greek: and is a set of theories and techniques of research to discover unconscious processes and their influence on conscious thought, emotion and behaviour. Based on dream interpretation, psychoanalysis is also a talk th ...

. His training analyst was

Donald Winnicott Donald Woods Winnicott (7 April 1896 – 25 January 1971) was an English paediatrician and psychoanalyst who was especially influential in the field of object relations theory and developmental psychology. He was a leading member of the Brit ...

. Masud Raza Khan was a protege of

Sigmund Freud Sigmund Freud ( ; ; born Sigismund Schlomo Freud; 6 May 1856 – 23 September 1939) was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, a clinical method for evaluating and treating psychopathology, pathologies seen as originating fro ...

's daughter

Anna Freud Anna Freud CBE ( ; ; 3 December 1895 – 9 October 1982) was a British psychoanalyst of Austrian Jewish descent. She was born in Vienna, the sixth and youngest child of Sigmund Freud and Martha Bernays. She followed the path of her father a ...

, and a long-time collaborator with Donald Winnicott.

Biography

Family background

Named Ibrahim at birth, Khan was born in

Jhelum Jhelum (; , ) is a city, located along the western bank of the Jhelum River, in Punjab, Pakistan. It is the 21st largest city in Punjab and 31st largest in Pakistan, by population. Located in northern Punjab, it serves as the capital of the ...

in the

Punjab Punjab (; ; also romanised as Panjāb or Panj-Āb) is a geopolitical, cultural, and historical region in South Asia. It is located in the northwestern part of the Indian subcontinent, comprising areas of modern-day eastern Pakistan and no ...

, then part of

British India The provinces of India, earlier presidencies of British India and still earlier, presidency towns, were the administrative divisions of British governance in South Asia. Collectively, they have been called British India. In one form or another ...

, now in

Pakistan Pakistan, officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by population, fifth-most populous country, with a population of over 241.5 million, having the Islam by country# ...

. His father, Fazaldad (c. 1846-1943), was a Shiite Muslim of peasant birth who had been richly rewarded by the British for the family's support and military service during the conquest of the region, and became a wealthy landowning

zamindar A zamindar in the Indian subcontinent was an autonomous or semi-autonomous feudal lord of a ''zamindari'' (feudal estate). The term itself came into use during the Mughal Empire, when Persian was the official language; ''zamindar'' is the ...

, adopting the name "

Khan Bahadur Khan Bahadur – a compound of ''Khan'' "Leader" and ''Bahadur'' "Brave" – was an honorary title in British India conferred on Indian subjects who were adherents of Islam or Zoroastrianism. The equivalent title for Hindus, Buddhists and India ...

Fazaldad Khan". He farmed, specializing in the breeding and sale of horses to the British in the army and for polo. He married four times (his first wife was a cousin, from whom he divorced due to infertility; the third wife died at a fairly young age), and had nine sons and several daughters. Masud Khan's mother, Khursheed Begum (1905-1971) was Fazaldad's fourth wife, whom he married when he was 76 and she was claiming to be seventeen. Masud Khan was ashamed of the marriage because she was an opium-addicted courtesan and "former dancing girl" with an illegitimate son. Khan referred to his father as "normally a cruel and authoritative feudal lord", observing him to be "a gaunt, bleak, monumental presence, either utterly still or raging in wild temper" for whose affection his sons competed and by whom they were disciplined with beatings, Masud, the youngest, was the only one to escape this form of punishment but nevertheless subjected to his father's high expectations and verbal chastisement. Khan, however, never criticized his harsh parenting, observing himself to have been "brought up an indulged child under an iron discipline". The marriage of Fazaldad Khan and Khursheed Begum — considered inappropriate due to his old age — caused friction with Fazaldad's second wife and their eldest son and heir, Akbar, who took her to live with him at Lahore.Judy Cooper. ''Speak of Me as I Am''. Karnac Books, 1993, pp. 5–7.

Early life

Masud Khan was raised with his older brother Tahir and his younger sister Mahmooda on his father's estate in the

Montgomery District Montgomery District was an administrative district of the former Punjab Province of British India, in what is now Pakistan. Named after Sir Robert Montgomery, it lay in the Bari Doab, or the tract between the Sutlej and the Ravi rivers, extend ...

. They moved to

Lyallpur Faisalabad, formerly known as Lyallpur, is the List of cities in Punjab, Pakistan by population, second-largest city and primary List of cities in Punjab, Pakistan by population, industrial center of the Pakistani province of Punjab, Pakistan ...

when Khan was 13. He was not allowed to see much of his mother during his early years, but after his father died in 1943, when Khan was 19, he went to live with her. An estrangement between them had arisen in Khan's youth, when she struck him for criticizing her late return from her ancestral home. Khan considered her a simple woman with a tendency to "anxious chatter" and became distant from her as he grew up. Khan stated that he was groomed as his father's heir from the age of four, accompanying Fazaldad in conducting estate business and watching him preside over the local court. Before this, he commented his father "hardly knew" him. His father's favorite child — Mohammed Baqar, different from his brothers, military men, in being an intellectual — was killed in a motorcycle accident aged 19 when a student at Oxford, the year before Khan's birth. Fazaldad encouraged Khan to "take Baqar's place as the family intellectual".

University years

Khan attended the

University of Punjab The University of the Punjab (UoP) is a public research university in Lahore, Punjab, Pakistan. Founded in 1882, its international influence has made it one of the most prestigious universities in South Asia; being the oldest and largest publ ...

Faisalabad Faisalabad, formerly known as Lyallpur, is the List of cities in Punjab, Pakistan by population, second-largest city and primary List of cities in Punjab, Pakistan by population, industrial center of the Pakistani province of Punjab, Pakistan ...

and

Lahore Lahore ( ; ; ) is the capital and largest city of the Administrative units of Pakistan, Pakistani province of Punjab, Pakistan, Punjab. It is the List of cities in Pakistan by population, second-largest city in Pakistan, after Karachi, and ...

from 1942–5. He obtained his BA in English literature, and his MA for a thesis on

James Joyce James Augustine Aloysius Joyce (born James Augusta Joyce; 2 February 1882 – 13 January 1941) was an Irish novelist, poet, and literary critic. He contributed to the modernist avant-garde movement and is regarded as one of the most influentia ...

Ulysses Ulysses is the Latin name for Odysseus, a legendary Greek hero recognized for his intelligence and cunning. He is famous for his long, adventurous journey home to Ithaca after the Trojan War, as narrated in Homer's Odyssey. Ulysses may also refer ...

. Masud Raza Khan acquired his double Masters in English Literature and Psychology from

and in 1946 applied to the British Psychoanalytic Association to be trained as an analyst, at the age of 22. His first training analyst was Ella Sharpe, who died nine months later. He completed his training analysis under John Rickman, and stayed with him in analysis until 1951, the year Rickman died. Khan qualified as an analyst at the age of 26, in 1950; and as a child analyst in 1952 under the supervision of Winnicott. After Rickman's death, Khan went into analysis with Winnicott, which lasted for 15 years until 1966.

Later life

In his later life Masud Khan's share of his father's vast estate was managed by his mother's illegitimate son Salahuddin ("Salah"; 1914-1979). In 1956, Masud Khan, his brother Tahir, and their stepbrother Salah, built a cinema, the Rex, in Lyallpur. After the collapse of the Pakistani cinema industry in the 1980s it became the Masud Super Market and Rex Hotel. He died at his home in London in 1989.

Work

His contributions include the concept of cumulative trauma. On this subject, Khan writes:

... cumulative trauma is the result of the breaches in the mother's role as a protective shield over the whole course of the child's development, from infancy to adolescence - that is to say, in all those areas of experience where the child continues to need the mother as an auxiliary ego to support his immature and unstable ego-functions.

Khan built on Winnicott's work, and proposed ideas such as that of secrecy as a potential space. Another concept is that of "lying fallow", a state of mind entered by the patient after prolonged clinical work in which a metabolization of psychic transformation occurs. He produced a number of papers highlighting perversions as stemming from a split within the personality and the

acting out In the psychology of defense mechanisms and self-control, acting out is the performance of an action considered bad or anti-social. They indirectly express emotions through behavior rather than words. These actions are often used to cope with un ...

of disturbed

object relations Object relations theory is a school of thought in psychoanalytic theory and psychoanalysis centered around theories of stages of ego development. Its concerns include the relation of the psyche to others in childhood and the exploration of re ...

collected in his book ''Alienation in Perversions''.

Reception

Khan was protegé of

and a long-time collaborator with D. W. Winnicott. Anna Freud insisted that Khan understood her father's work better than anyone else and spoke in defence of her star pupil whenever he aroused the British Psycho-Analytical Society's ire.

Controversy

Khan's position in the

British Psychoanalytical Society The British Psychoanalytical Society was founded by Ernest Jones as the London Psychoanalytical Society on 30 October 1913. It is one of several organisations in Britain training psychoanalysts. The society has been home to a number of psych ...

as training analyst gave him legitimacy, while at the same time he became less and less adherent to psychoanalytic guidelines with boundary violations including socialising and entering relationships with some of his students and analysands.Roger Willoughby (Author), Pearl King (Foreword): Masud Khan: The Myth And The Reality, Publisher: Free Association Books; 1 edition (January 2005), He lost his status as training analyst and later resigned from the British Psychoanalytical Society after the publication of his last book ''When Spring Comes'' which included a remark about the

Yiddish Yiddish, historically Judeo-German, is a West Germanic language historically spoken by Ashkenazi Jews. It originated in 9th-century Central Europe, and provided the nascent Ashkenazi community with a vernacular based on High German fused with ...

history of psychoanalysis which was deemed

anti-semitic Antisemitism or Jew-hatred is hostility to, prejudice towards, or discrimination against Jews. A person who harbours it is called an antisemite. Whether antisemitism is considered a form of racism depends on the school of thought. Antisemi ...

. In his later years he signed his name as Prince Raja Khan, explaining he had inherited the title from his ancestors.

Personal life

Khan was married initially to the dancer

Jane Shore Elizabeth "Jane" Shore (née Lambert; 1445 – c. 1527) was one of the many mistresses of King Edward IV of England. She became the best known in history by being later accused of conspiracy by the future King Richard III and compelled to do p ...

; he later divorced her and in 1959 married ballerina

Svetlana Beriosova Svetlana Nikolayevna Beriosova (; 24 September 1932 – 10 November 1998), also spelled Beriozova or Beryozova, was a Lithuanian-British prima ballerina who danced with The Royal Ballet for more than 20 years. Early life Beriosova was born in Ka ...

; they divorced in 1974. Together with Beriosova he led a prominent social life in a London scene which included well-known figures such as actress

Julie Andrews Dame Julie Andrews (born Julia Elizabeth Wells; 1 October 1935) is an English actress, singer, and author. She has garnered numerous accolades throughout her career spanning over eight decades, including an Academy Award, a British Academy Fi ...

, photographer Zoë Dominic, actor

Peter O'Toole Peter Seamus O'Toole (; 2 August 1932 – 14 December 2013) was an English actor known for his leading roles on stage and screen. His numerous accolades include the Academy Honorary Award, a BAFTA Award, a Primetime Emmy Award, and four Golde ...

and members of the

Redgrave family The Redgrave family is a British acting dynasty, spanning five generations. Members of the family worked in theatre beginning in the nineteenth century, and later in film and television. Some family members have also written plays and books. Vanes ...

Character

Khan wrote in his ''Work Books'' that he inherited his shyness, sensitivity, and warmth from his mother, and from his father, an "imperious capacity for work and a terrible temper." He had a slight deformity, a "deformed and oversized" right ear that stuck out, of which he was very conscious, later taking to wearing a beret to hide it, until Winnicott persuaded him to have it fixed in 1951.Cooper, Judy. ''Speak of me as I am''. Karnac Books, 1993, p. 10. Khan was described as tall, handsome with charm and sex appeal, he was known as charming, charismatic and infamous for impromptu flashes of psychoanalytic insights given randomly to people met at social occasions. His paradoxical and highly unpredictable nature was summarised by his close friend and colleague, the French psychoanalyst, Victor Smirnoff, who wrote at his death:

Certainly was an unusual man: gifted, beautiful, rich, intelligent. But he was also cunning, boastful,
narcissistic Narcissism is a self-centered personality style characterized as having an excessive preoccupation with oneself and one's own needs, often at the expense of others. Narcissism, named after the Greek mythological figure ''Narcissus'', has evolv ...
, stingy, prejudiced and cruel. He was a strange, talented, sometimes disquieting analyst. But he had style, taste and flair. And he was a faithful friend. Requiescat in pace.Communication Victor Smirnoff to Robert Stoller quoted in: Roger Willoughby (Author), Pearl King (Foreword): Masud Khan: The Myth And The Reality, Publisher: Free Association Books; 1 edition (January 2005),

Bibliography

*Khan, Masud (1974)''. The Privacy of the Self.'' Karnac Books: London. *Khan, Masud (1979) ''Alienation in Perversions.'' Karnac Books: London, . *Khan, Masud (1983) ''Hidden Selves: Between Theory and Practice.'' Karnac Books: London. *Khan, Masud (1988) ''When Spring Comes: Awakenings in Clinical Psychoanalysis''.

Chatto and Windus Chatto & Windus is an imprint of Penguin Random House that was formerly an independent book publishing company founded in London in 1855 by John Camden Hotten. Following Hotten's death, the firm would reorganize under the names of his business ...

: London. **US version: Khan, Masud (1989)''. The Long Wait: And Other Psychoanalytic Narratives''. Summit Books''.'' *Khan, Masud (2022). ''Diary of a Fallen Psychoanalyst. The Work Books of Masud Khan 1967-1972''. Edited by Linda Hopkins and Steven Kuchuck. Karnac Books: London.

Notes

References

*Linda Hopkins: ''False Self. The Life of Masud Khan.'', New York: Other Press, 2006 *Roger Willoughby (Author), Pearl King (Foreword): ''Masud Khan: The Myth And The Reality LLUSTRATED', Publisher: Free Association Books; 1 edition (January 2005), *Judy Cooper: ''Speak of Me As I Am: The Life and Work of Masud Khan'', Publisher: Karnac Books; 1 edition (1 February 1994),

External links

Saving Masud Khan, by Wynne Godley
A first-hand account of analysis under Khan

New York Times, Published: 21 January 2007

Published: 20 November 2008 * ttp://www.psychoanalysis.org.uk/ The Institute of Psychoanalysis & British Psychoanalytical Society {{DEFAULTSORT:Khan, Masud British psychoanalysts Analysands of D. W. Winnicott Analysands of Ella Freeman Sharpe 1924 births 1989 deaths Pakistani emigrants to the United Kingdom