wynne godley · saving masud khan_ psychoanalysis · lrb 22 february 2001

Wynne Godley Saving Masud Khan: psychoanalysis LRB 22 February 2001

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Saving Masud KhanWynne Godley

This is the story of a disastrous encounter with psychoanalysis which severelyblemished my middle years.

I was about thirty years old when I found myself to be in a state of terribledistress. It was the paralysis of my will, rather than the pain itself, whichenabled me to infer, using my head, that I needed help different in kind fromthe support of friends. A knowledgeable acquaintance suggested that I consultD.W. Winnicott, without telling me that he was pre-eminent among Britishpsychoanalysts.

I dont think that living through an artificial self, which is what had got me intosuch an awful mess, is all that uncommon. The condition is difficult torecognise because it is concealed from the world, and from the subject, withruthless ingenuity. It does not feature in the standard catalogue of neuroticsymptoms such as hysteria, obsession, phobia, depression or impotence; and itis not inconsistent with worldly success or the formation of deep and lastingfriendships. The disjointed components of the artificial self are not individuallyartificial.

What is it like to live in a state of dissociation? In a real sense, the subject isnever corporeally present at all but goes about the world in a waking dream.Behaviour is managed by an auto-pilot. Responses are neither direct norspontaneous. Every event is re-enacted after it has taken place and processedin an internal theatre. On the one hand, the subject may be bafflinglyinsensitive but this goes with extreme vulnerability, for the whole apparatuscan only function within a framework of familiar and trusted responses. He orshe is defenceless against random, unexpected or malicious events. Evil cannotbe countered because it cannot be identified.

The short personal story which follows is so familiar in its outline that it mayseem stale, but I cannot explain how I allowed such strange things to happento me unless I tell it.

My parents separated from one another, with great and protracted bitterness,at about the time I was born, in 1926, and I hardly ever saw them together. Ininfancy I was looked after, in various country houses in Sussex and Kent, bynannies and governesses as well as by a fierce maiden aunt who shook meviolently when I cried. My mother, though frequently in bed with what shecalled my pain, was a poet, playwright, pianist, composer and actress, andthese activities took her away from home for long and irregular periods oftime. When she rematerialised, we had long goodnights during which, as shesang to me, I undid her hair so that it fell over her shoulders. She used toparade naked in front of me, and would tell me (for instance) of the intensepleasure she got from sexual intercourse, of the protracted agony andhumiliation she had suffered when giving birth to my much older half-sister,Ann, who grew up retarded and violent (screamed, spat, bit, kicked, threw),and of her disappointment when my father was impotent, particularly on theirhoneymoon. The intimacies we shared made me love her over the biggestnumber in the world.

My father was shadowy to begin with; he was an elderly man always

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approaching sixty. I first perceived him as an invalid disturbingly unlikeother childrens fathers. But he had great personal authority, distinction andcharm, which I could identify in the responses of other people to him.Occasionally he gave me superlative presents a toy launch which got up itsown steam, a flying model of a biplane.

Neither of my parents had a social circle. No one came to stay. There were nochildren next door to play with.

As a young child I believed myself to be special, endowed with supernatural,even divine, powers which would one day astonish the world. I also knew that Iwas worthless, with no gifts or rights, and that I looked fat, dull and unmanly.The achievements of others, particularly those of my older brother John, stoodin for anything that I might achieve myself, and afterwards a series ofdistinguished men were to step into Johns shoes. I acquired a spectacularability to not see, identify or shrewdly evaluate people or situations. Althoughpassive and sickly, I enjoyed secret fantasies of violence. When asked what Iwas going to be when I grew up, I replied that I was going to be a boy actress.

When I was six, an abscess developed in my inner ear which eventually, in aclimax of torture, burst through my eardrum. For years afterwards I often hadto wear a bandage round the whole of my head to contain the discharge. Ibecame 90 per cent deaf in one ear; I also started to get short-sighted andwear spectacles.

When just seven years old I was sent to a boarding school, for eight solidmonths of each year, without the elementary social or other skills that wereneeded. I could hardly read and had never dressed myself, so that doing up myback braces was painful and nearly impossible; it never occurred to me that Icould slip them off my shoulders. The little boys were often beaten and kickedby the masters and I found this extremely frightening; one child was severelycaned in front of the whole school. Lessons were an impenetrable bore.Occasionally I had severe panic attacks associated with strange fantasies forinstance, that I would soon die and be reincarnated as a rabbit in a hutch,unable to communicate with my parents or siblings.

When I was ten, my father, having inherited a peerage and a great deal ofmoney, remarried and recovered a family estate of unsurpassable loveliness ina remote part of Southern Ireland. My stepmother, Nora, created a luxuriousand beautiful home, full of light and flowers, in a mansion house whichoverlooked two large lakes with woods running down to them. With John andmy sister Katharine I was cocooned, during the school holidays, in totalcomplaisance by a full complement of servants, gardeners, handymen andfarm hands, of whose irony I was never conscious. On the morning of my 11thbirthday my father walked into my bedroom, still wearing his pyjamas, with a20-bore shotgun under his arm. I learned to shoot snipe and play tennis.

Around this time, my mother revealed that for years and years my father had



been the most terrible drunkard. In response to my anxious enquiry sheemphasised that he drank until he became completely fuddled. Meanwhile shehad taken as a lover an ebullient young man, 15 years younger than herself,who emanated genius. This was William Glock, later to become the mostversatile and influential musician of his generation. It was through his earsthat I first heard and loved music and therefore started to learn the oboe. Hesoon fell in love with Katharine, and, sort of, with me (now aged 14) and wethree drank a lot of rum and lime, with enormous hilarity.

When I was about fifteen, while John was fighting a gallant war over theAtlantic, my father started to drink again.

Heavy drinking is often associated with boisterous behaviour in a socialcontext. My father never drank publicly at all and, drunk or sober, was neverboisterous. He saw himself as a nobleman; and his style was that of adistinguished barrister, which is what he really was. But having sufferedpreviously from delirium tremens, one or two shots caused him to collapse intobestial incoherence. He had convinced himself that if he was alone when he putthe bottle to his lips no one would notice what was going on. I colluded withhim in this, never referring to his drinking in any way. His drunkenness, whenit occurred, was conspicuous and desperately embarrassing, whether he was inresidence as a grandee in the Irish countryside or asleep in the Chamber of theHouse of Lords or visiting me at school. When he was not drinking, herecovered his authority completely. He was a fine violinist and during hisabstinent periods, with Katharine at the piano, we played the great Bachdouble concertos together.

As my father started to deteriorate in earnest he became violently anti-semiticand, just as the war was ending, he used to say: Would it really have been sobad if the Germans had come here? My stepmother confided to me, as mymother had done, that my father had generally been impotent and that she hada lover in Dublin.

For all the confidences I had received, for all my precocity and sense of havingbeen through more than my contemporaries, I did not know, at the age of 17,that the vagina existed, supposing that childbirth was painful because it tookplace through the urethra. Nor did I know that men ejaculated.

I spent four supremely happy years at Oxford and owe my higher educationentirely to Isaiah Berlin, who taught me philosophy, tte--tte, through 1946-47. I designed my first essay for him with a conscious intent to please but hewas not to be seduced; he interrupted me at once and tore my work to pieces. Aweek later I adapted my first philosophical position to one which, so far as Icould infer, must be closer to his, but he left me in shreds again. In response tohis seemingly inconsistent criticisms, I invented ever more complicatedstructures which must, I supposed, be getting me closer to what he reallythought. One day he asked me to repeat a passage and when I did so he burstinto merry laughter exclaiming: How gloriously artificial! I was deeply hurtbut impelled thereafter to make the stupendous effort which, over a period of15 months, was to transform my intellect.

All my old people faded away very sadly. Nora shot herself in the head with ashotgun; my father, his entire fortune squandered, died alone in a hospitalwhere the nurses were unkind to him; my half-sister was committed to a highsecurity mental institution at Epsom; my mother had a bad stroke and livedout her last six years hemiplegic and helpless, her mind altered. She told hernurses that they were lower-class scum and complained that I was marryingthe daughter of a New York yid. This yid was Jacob Epstein.

Soon after my mother died I had a dream. I saw her in a bathtub in whichthere was no water. She was paralysed from the waist down and instead of thepubic hair I had seen as a young child there was a large open wound. Through



the upper part of the room there was a system of ropes, pulleys and hooks.Although the lower part of her body was inert, she could operate the ropesskilfully with her hands and arms in a way which enabled her to get her bodyto move, with extreme agility, about the bathroom. She was confined to theroom because the whole contraption was slung from the ceiling and attached tothe walls. Her lower half sometimes got left behind or forced into strangeshapes against the walls or over the edge of the tub as she moved around.

Winnicotts elegant white suit was crumpled; so was his handsome face. Hereminded me of a very frail Spencer Tracy. His sentences were not alwayscoherent but I experienced them as direct communications to an incrediblyprimitive part of myself; I want to say that we spoke to one another baby tobaby. The crumpled face was a tabula rasa, impassive but receptive.

I described my impasse to Winnicott, adding that my tears were tightly lockedinto their ducts. After desultory responses he asked me whether I had any cotrecollections. Yes, I replied, scouring my mind and recollecting myself in apram in a place where it could not, in reality, have stood in the middle of amain road.

Was there an object with you? he asked.

Yes, I replied, there was a kaleidoscope.

What a hard thing, was Winnicotts comment.

Winnicott next asked me if I would have any objection to seeing a Pakistanianalyst. As I left he said, very kindly, You have been very frank with me,adding: I think you were a lonely child.

I arranged an appointment with Masud Khan from my office in the Treasury,where I was now an economic adviser, and he met me at the foot of the stairsleading to his attic apartment in Harley Street. He was in his mid-thirties, atall, erect and substantially built man with beautiful Oriental features. He hadabundant black hair swept back over his ears and was slightly overdressed inthe style of an English gentleman.

I repeated to Khan the story of my impasse and in the course of telling itmentioned that I read a lot of newspapers. He looked up and asked mewhether, if I read all these papers, I hadnt read something about him. When Isaid that I hadnt he assumed an expression of mock disbelief. A little later hebroke into my narrative and asked irrelevantly: Havent you got someconnection with Epstein? At this I checked, expressing concern about theconfidentiality of what I was telling him, since his question implied that healready knew something about me and perhaps that we had social friends incommon. Khan did not answer directly. He grunted and tried to lookimpassive.

Khan next explained that he was going to get married to Svetlana Beriosova,the loveliest of the Royal Ballets ballerinas, in about ten days time; this waswhy I might have read about him in the press. At the end of the interview, hedrove me slowly part of the way home in his Armstrong Siddeley. In the car heproduced a book of poems by James Joyce from the pouch in the door and toldme that he read them when he was stuck in traffic jams. He asked, Did younever think of killing yourself? but answered the question himself: You wouldnot know whom to kill.



It is astonishing to me, with the knowledge I now have, that Khan so intrudedhimself into that first interview, which should have held out the promise of asafe, private and neutral space in which a dialogue with its own dynamic couldtake place. Yet within minutes of our first meeting, as I can now clearly see, thetherapeutic relationship had been totally subverted. He needed myendorsement, as will become increasingly clear; he also needed to intrude onme. I had no way of registering that there was something amiss in hisexpecting me to know about his forthcoming marriage (which implied that hewould be leaving me for his honeymoon almost as soon as we had begun work)or in his showing me that he was a literary man who drove a smart car. But Idid know that there was something completely wrong about the Epsteinquestion; it had given me a sense of contamination, which I suppressed in asickeningly familiar way.

Khan now distanced himself. I referred the following day to his girl and hecorrected me, my future wife adding: You thought you were going tocuddle up with me, didnt you? I did not, by a very long way, have theunderstanding or presence of mind to reply that this was an expectation whichhe himself had created; and I felt that it was, indeed, I who had intruded.

During the next few days my artificial self came, in stages, completely to piecesalthough my adult mind continued to function in a completely normal way; forinstance, I continued to work in the Treasury without a break. The meltdown,which took the form of a series of quasi-hallucinations accompanied by stormsof emotion, all took place at home, although I reported them to Khan. Thesewaking dreams came to a climax after about three days. I saw a blanket insidemy skull which was very tightly wrapped around my brain. And it began toloosen! First intermittently, then decisively, the blanket came right away like ahuge scab and I reached, as it seemed, an extraordinary new insight. My fatherhad hated me! By appearing at my school when obviously drunk, he hadmaliciously used my love for him as a weapon against me! And he had cruellyseparated me from my sister by sending me away to school. Theseperceptions generated an outburst of infantile rage. While in this strangecondition I saw, as in a vision, a sentence which was lit up, flickering andsuspended in the air. The words were:

UNLESS HE JUSTIFIES HIMSELF I MUST SAVE HIM

The meaning I attributed, with partial understanding, to this sentence was thatunless the parent is perceived by the infant as strong and self-sufficient, thecaring process will go into reverse with the force of the ocean bursting througha dam.

No one, as I now know, has written with more penetration about the genesis ofthe artificial self than Winnicott. The birthright of every child is to receive,starting from the primal union, a uniquely empathetic response whichnurtures its growth and establishes its identity. If this does not happen, theinfant may come under an overpowering compulsion, as a condition for its



very survival, to provide whatever it is the parent needs from the relationship.An incredibly destructive but deeply concealed reversal of roles then takesplace.

My cathartic explosion was perfectly sincere and real. A fantastic distortion ofmy character that had governed my life up to that point, a bizarre mushroomgrowth, had been clearly revealed to me and I experienced a feelingfulnesswhich had been blockaded for as long as I could remember.

By the time Khan returned from his honeymoon in Monte Carlo, I was havingdreams about cars slipping backwards down icy pathways in the darkness. ButI clung to the firm belief that another emotional breakthrough would soonoccur.

It never did. What followed was a long and fruitless battle culminating in aspiral of degradation.

A crucial component of the analytic process resides in the patients ability toarticulate thoughts, fantasies or images as they occur to him or her, especiallyany hostile thoughts he or she may have towards the analyst. Unless thishappens, the primitive reversal of roles can never be undone. But it isextremely difficult, requiring great concentration, courage and trust, to expressmurderous thoughts and insults to their object. The way such insults arenegotiated is one of the keenest measures of an analysts skill, character andfitness to practise; the artificial self knows all too well how to make othersbleed.

As I come to describe Khans failure to pass this elementary test, I realise that Iam in danger of making him seem a mere figure of fun. There was indeedsomething wholly ridiculous about him as there was about Adolf Hitler. Buthe had a formidable and quick-acting intelligence, astonishing powers ofobservation and an unrivalled ability straightaway to see deeply below thesurface. He was impossible to worst. He knew how to exploit and defy theconventions which govern social intercourse in England, taking full advantageof the fact that the English saw him instinctively as inferior as a native and tried to patronise him.

When I asked Khan why he wore a riding jacket which had a silly slit in themiddle of his behind, he replied stiffly: Ask the man who tailored it. When Isaid his flat was furnished like a hotel he referred reproachfully to my wifessuperb style, which I had failed to recognise, turning the flat, in my mind, intoa a shabby hotel. I didnt have the presence of mind to tell him that what Iobjected to was that his flat was like a smart hotel. Khan told me that hewanted to give me a good start and went on to explain how the infant eats thebreast but that the breast also eats the infant. Summoning up my courage (for Iwas also afraid of hurting him) I said: This silly buffoon is talking drivel. Tothis Khan replied that, unlike some of his colleagues, he believed in payingback aggression from his patients in kind. And I was presuming to look for helpfrom the man whom in your mind you call a buffoon in a clipped, whisperedand venomous tone, adding that I lived like a pig in my own home. He wasntgoing to pretend, so he said, that things were other than they were; he hadbeen sadistic towards me and for days and months afterwards he referred tothis as the sadistic session.

Beriosova was often featured, scantily dressed, in press photographs. I wantedto know which bit of her was grabbed by her partner when he held her on topof a single outstretched arm, as well as other more intimate things. Khan toldme that I was using the analytic situation as a licence to articulate [my]intrusive fantasies. And he soon became enraged. You say that to me to annoyme, he said and then, after a pause: Which it does. He then went into a tiradeabout my crude assault (You Englishman!) on a being so precious to him. Ido know how to protect my wife, he said as though I had attacked her. At the



least slight it was Khans invariable response to deliver a righteous speech,often finishing up with some withering coda such as And to think you peopleruled the world! Only now can I see how easy it was to bait him.

We hardly ever spoke of my childhood. Khan preferred, he said, to work outof the material which was thrown up by contemporary experiences. Everythingof significance that had happened in the past could be reinterpreted in termsof what was happening now. This gave him a licence to interfere actively,judgmentally and with extraordinary cruelty in every aspect of my daily life.

We entered a long period of painful stasis. When is something going tohappen? I would ask and he would reply: I wonder too when something isgoing to happen. I have exhausted these were his exact words everymanoeuvre that I know. You are a tiresome and disappointing man.

How did I account to myself for what was happening? I thought thateverything unkind Khan said to me was justified and that I was learning toaccept home truths; that this was extraordinarily painful but the essence ofwhat a good and true analysis should be. We werent having one of those soppyanalyses that the ignorant public imagines, where a pathetic neurotic talksabout himself and is passively listened to, and endlessly comforted. Thecharacteristic sensation I experienced was a smouldering rage which carriedme from session to session. I felt like a kettle that had been left on the flamelong after the water had boiled away.

Khan liked it when I moved up through the Treasury ranks, greatlyoverestimating the importance and significance of the positions which I held.Meanwhile he began increasingly to fill the sessions with tales about his ownsocial life in London or, occasionally, New York. The stories were not goodones. Many were obscene and many were flat, but there was one featurecommon to every one of them: Khan had got the better of someone. He hadrescued Mike Nichols from a man with a fierce dog in New York. He hadfought physically with Peter OToole, using a broken bottle. He had got theoverflow from his lavatory to pour a jet of water onto the head of a womanwho was making her car hoot in the street below. Often it would be nothingmore than an ugly exchange at a drinking party for which he needed myapproval and endorsement. The following characteristic tale, being brief, muststand in for a limitless number of other stories that I can immediately recall.

A man comes up to Khan at a party and says: Every night I go to bed with twobeautiful women. I make love to one of them and then, if I feel like it, I turnover and make love to the other. Sometimes I make love to both of them atonce. Yes, Khan says, but by the laws of topology there must always be oneorifice which remains vacant.

Very occasionally he appealed to me for sympathy. Princess Margaret hadtripped him up over the way he had pronounced something. Lord Denning (itwas Profumo time) had not replied to his invitation to come to dinner.



Khan always answered telephone calls during sessions. When Winnicott rangup I could clearly hear both sides of the conversation, so presumably he angledthe phone towards me. Winnicott spoke respectfully to Khan, for instanceabout a paper which he had recently published. I learned a great deal from it,Winnicott said deferentially. This particular conversation ended with a gigglyjoke about homosexual fellatio the final two words of the conversation accompanied by loud laughter.

A gynaecologist rang up during one of my sessions to enquire about a patientof Khans whom I shall call Marian and who was expecting a baby. Khan spokeharshly about her to the gynaecologist, closing the conversation with theadvice: And charge her a good fee. Khan kept me in touch with the progressof Marians pregnancy. She was not married, and as her confinementapproached he referred to it bitingly as the virgin birth.

After the child was born, Khan started speaking of Marian as a suitable partnerfor me although I was happily married and although, as I much laterdiscovered, he had secretly invited my wife Kitty to an interview with him.Marian and I were handmade for one another. Khan induced me to take herout to lunch. If shes not really beautifully dressed, but really beautifullydressed, give her hell. I took her to Overtons in Victoria where we ate seafoodand had an amiable conversation without there being any spark between us.

We now started meeting trois, Marian, Khan and myself. On one occasion wewent to a literary group in Battersea where Khan gave a talk on Neurosis andCreativity. On another, Marian watched from the gallery while I trouncedKhan at squash, breaking his nose with my racquet in the process; immediatelyfollowing which Khan, bloody nose and all, insisted on playing, because hecould win, a game of ping-pong. And the three of us spent a whole eveningplaying poker for matchsticks. Khan cheated; he grabbed half my growing pileof matchsticks when I wasnt looking, although I didnt allow myself to realiseit at the time. He chortled that with the power he possessed over each of us hecould orchestrate the conversation at any level he chose. At my next sessionhe told me that this had been the happiest evening he had ever spent in his life.

At my next session! I was still seeing the man five times a week and payinghim large fees. And I went on doing so until the end, although it isinconceivable that any therapy was taking place; for a long time now I was theone who was looking after him. Paying fees was part of keeping up the absurdfiction that a great patient was having a great analysis with a great analyst. Ihave the virtues which are the counterpart of my defects, he was fond ofsaying. He had saved my life, the story went and no one else could have doneit. About this time Khan began to shower me with presents. He gave me asilver pen, a complete Encyclopaedia Britannica, a signed lithograph ofsunflowers by Lger, an Indian bedspread, a Nonesuch Bible in three volumes,and several books, including The Naked Lunch.

Sometimes Beriosova was the hostess. Her physical movements were light andregal though she smoked heavily and drank a great deal of gin. On oneoccasion there were other analysands besides me present. Beriosova drankmore gin than usual, retired to the Khan bedroom and screeched: Get themout of here, get them out of here.

One evening I found myself alone with Khan and Beriosova in their flat. Bothof them were drunk. They left the room separately so that I was alone for someminutes. I heard a faint moan which was repeated more loudly; the moanturned into my own name an inarticulate appeal for assistance fromsomeone helpless and in severe pain. Going into the hall, I saw Khan, lying fulllength and motionless on the ground. In agony he whispered: My wife haskicked me in the balls. As he slowly recovered his wind I supported him backto the drawing-room. Re-entering the hall I found Beriosova lying full lengthon the floor exactly where Khan had been. I tried to lift her up. (It must be easy



to pick up dancers they have no weight I somehow thought.) But Beriosovawas a substantial woman, inert and apparently insensible. I left the hall and onmy return a few moments later she had disappeared. At the next session Iobserved to Khan that I might, at some stage, have to say that things had got sofar out of hand that I would have to break off the analysis. His reply was that ifit got that far, he would break off the analysis one day before I did. So he wonthat trick too.

Eventually Khan irrupted into my home. He rang up announcing that he andBeriosova were going to call on us within the next few minutes. Khan fidgetedabout the house and made a lot of suggestions as to how we should manageour minor affairs (I should mow the lawn diagonally, for example, or set thelamp which hung low over the dining-room table upside down). He teasedKittys younger daughter, then a patient of Winnicotts, by doing a ludicrousimitation of her. For this he got a tremendous rocket from Winnicott he laterrecounted with loud laughter.

We now started to meet quite frequently, and go to parties, as two marriedcouples. It is part of the story that we often met celebrities and that I foundmyself in conversation with, say, Rudolf Nureyev and Franois Truffaut.

As a prelude to the final tale, I must record that Kitty, having had amiscarriage a year or two before, had reached the third month of anexceptionally difficult pregnancy in the course of which all hope of saving thechild had been given up more than once. We had not yet had a child.

We went out to dinner quatre to a Chinese restaurant in Knightsbridge.Khan outdid himself in a tour de force of meaningless aggression. The onlyprecise things I can remember are that he bullied and insulted the Chinesewaiters, for instance by openly imitating them. (I use inverted commasbecause it was not a genuine imitation, but a high-pitched whine appropriateto a schoolboy joke.) Although I was incapable of any vital response, Khansbehaviour was so extreme and unremitting, and there was so little space inwhich to move, that I began at last to feel something curdling deep withinmyself.

The next day Kitty came into the room and told me that Khan had rung her upand torn into her. She had a sharp pain in her womb.

The perception that, at the level of reality, Khan had made an attempt on thelife of our unborn only child was painful beyond anything I can convey. Ibelieve that one of the Nazi medical experiments was to inject ammonia intovictims veins. I felt that the living, if deformed, armature inside myself wascorroding.

I rang up Winnicott and said, Khan is mad, to which he said emphatically,Yes, adding: All this social stuff He didnt finish the sentence but he cameround to our house immediately, saying that he had told Khan not tocommunicate with me again. As he said this, the telephone rang and it was,indeed, Khan wanting not only to speak to me but to see me, which I refused todo.

And that was the end of my analysis.

Ten years after the Chinese meal, having had an operation for cancer of thethroat, Khan made a direct appeal to me, in a hoarse whisper, to visit him.When I arrived at his flat in Bayswater, a small Filipino servant pointedtowards his drawing-room door saying: The prince is in there. Khan hadentirely changed his style; he had lost his beauty and now wore a black tunicand a necklace with a heavy ornament hanging from it. He was very drunk andinsisted on talking pidgin French, which was completely incomprehensible. Hiscompanions were sycophants but there was one beautiful and elegant womanamong them. From time to time he pointed to me and said: He and I the



same. Aristocrats.

I hear that Khan slept at will with his female patients, became an even moreserious drunkard and shortly before he died was struck off. And that Beriosovaappeared drunk on the stage at Covent Garden, faded away and died, firstseparated then divorced from Khan. I have also discovered, to myastonishment, that throughout the whole time that I was seeing Khan, he washimself in analysis with Winnicott. And this has led me to reinterpret someletters which I sent to Winnicott at Khans instance, and the replies I receivedfrom him, as an aggressive flirtation between the two of them, using my bodyas unwitting intermediary.

It is now perfectly clear to me that, after seeing Khan daily for several years,and after untold expense and travail, no therapy whatever had taken place.What a trap! He had reproduced and re-enacted every major traumaticcomponent of my childhood and adolescence. The primal union had beenruptured. The confidences which he reposed in me had made me special, justas my mothers had; he had the same need as she to perform and be performedfor. And the same destructive gymnastics that I had once had to negotiate,given the deep attachment I had to my deteriorating father, were played out allover again. For the second time, I was overcome by a compulsion to attemptthe transformation of a drunken, anti-semitic, collapsing wreckage into aliving armature on which to build myself.

HE COULD NOT JUSTIFY HIMSELF SO I WAS COMPELLED TO SAVE HIM

What I have written is not an attack on psychoanalysis, for which, as adiscipline, I have the utmost respect. I could not have gained the insight towrite this piece, nor could I have recovered from the experiences I havedescribed, if they had not at last been undone at the hands of a skilful, patientand selfless American analyst beside whom the conceited antics of Khan and,indeed, Winnicott seem grotesque beyond words.

But what recommendation could I now make to someone in need of help? Oneanswer might be: Ask the President of the British Psychoanalytic Society. Butthis, it turns out, is precisely what I did, without realising it. And Khan himselfwas training analysts for years after my break with him. Yet his personaldefects were so severe that he should never under any circumstances have beenallowed to practise psychoanalysis. I understand that his disbarment, whenafter twenty odd more years it came, was the consequence not ofpsychoanalytic malpractice, but of his outspoken anti-semitism. This, it seems,was more important than the deep, irreparable and wanton damage hewrought, from a position of exceptional privilege and against every canon ofprofessional and moral obligation, on distressed and vulnerable people whocame to him for help and paid him large sums of money to get it.

Contact us for rights and issues inquiries.

LettersVol. 23 No. 5 8 March 2001

Wynne Godleys article (LRB, 22 February) underlines the fact that psychotherapy isa profoundly risky business with an irreducible shadow aspect. Suggestions thatMasud Khan was just a rotten apple should be resisted. As Godley says, his

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professional connections with D.W. Winnicott and others were impeccable and hewas the training analyst for several of todays psychoanalytical luminaries. Theproblem is that, even nowadays, the private training institutions of psychotherapy,such as the British Psycho-Analytical Society, enjoy unreasonable and excessiveindependence. What regulation and vetting there is (of course content, to take anobvious example) is usually carried out by friendly professionals from relatedinstitutions. Moreover, there are serious defects in the systems of complaint anddiscipline. Several of these institutions have been very reluctant to use externaladvisers and assessors (such as lawyers) in ethics cases. In one case, external wasdefined to mean external to the society hearing the complaint and otherpsychotherapists from a friendly organisation were appointed. The Government isconsidering regulation and there have been private efforts in the Lords to bring thisabout. These efforts will prove useless unless the feudal arrangements of thepsychotherapy world are opened to public scrutiny.

Andrew SamuelsProfessor of Analytical Psychology, University of Essex

Wynne Godleys terrifying account of psychoanalysis must serve as a warning tothose who fear their handles may be grasped by analysts eager to open doors.Suffering distress, as Godley did, in my early thirties, I was directed to a (highlyrecommended) psychoanalyst who, after informing me that I should embark on alengthy and expensive course with him, proceeded to ask, as I left my name andaddress: Do you use the front bit? Realising that he had researched the bit inquestion an Hon., for which title I had as much responsibility as, say, asupernumerary nipple I ran, never to return.

Emma TennantLondon W11

Vol. 23 No. 6 22 March 2001

I read Wynne Godley's painful account of his analysis with the late Masud Khan(LRB, 22 February) with concern, anger and regret at the maltreatment of a patientby a psychoanalyst. In order to understand the reaction of the British Psycho-Analytical Society, of which Masud Khan was a member, I have talked to oldercolleagues. Although there were rumours of inappropriate professional behaviour byMasud Khan, a case of malpractice could not be brought on the basis of rumour. Ibelieve that attempts were made to encourage patients and ex-patients to comeforward with a complaint, but none did so. Colleagues who knew Masud Khan saidthat he was knowledgable and intelligent and could be sensitive and insightful. Somepatients felt helped by him. Sadly, his behaviour towards other patients was totallyunacceptable. When Khan himself provided evidence of his professional misconductwith patients, his contempt for colleagues and his anti-semitism in his last book,When Spring Comes: Awakenings in Clinical Psychoanalysis (1988), he wasexpelled within months from the British Psycho-Analytical Society.

Today, we endeavour to protect patients in a variety of ways. We now respond tothird-party complaints (when there is more than one), rather than waiting for apatient to come forward, by interviewing the analyst concerned. We also have adesignate analyst who is available to talk to family and friends who may beconcerned about a patient and/or their treatment. We have developed a Code ofEthics and Guidelines, which has established standards of practice and a system ofinvestigating alleged offences. If a patient wants to file a complaint they can come inconfidence to our Ethical Committee. In sufficiently serious cases, legal counsel andnon-analysts are welcome to represent complainants and respondents at ethicalhearings.

The patient and selfless analyst Wynne Godley found to undo the consequences ofhis disturbing experience practised the kind of analysis we teach and practise in theBritish Psycho-Analytical Society.

Donald CampbellPresident, British Psycho-Analytical Society, London W9

Wynne Godley ends by saying: What I have written is not an attack on



psychoanalysis, for which, as a discipline, I have the utmost respect. It isunbelievable how every sad story about analysis is seen as exceptional and successfulanalyses are seen as the rule. Most of the problems Godley describes have somerelation to the structure of psychoanalysis, which favours secret, uncontrolled,unequal relationships in which helpless and slightly disturbed people let themselvesbe manipulated by somewhat deranged self-declared geniuses. When will peoplerealise that a skilful, patient and selfless analyst is the exception, and that eventhese exceptions will in time lose touch with reality, because there is so much purehype and make-believe in psychoanalytic theory?

J.P. RoosUniversity of Helsinki

It seems clear, as Wynne Godley points out, that the traumas of his childhood wererepeated under Masud Khan's care and that Khan himself was too ill to be practisingpsychoanalysis. It is a tragic and disturbing story, especially since Khan was anexceptionally gifted clinician and a profound thinker, breaking new ground inpsychoanalytic theory. Unfortunately, such instances of malpractice and abuse dooccur. The British Confederation of Psychotherapists an umbrella organisationrepresenting psychoanalysts, analytical psychologists, psychoanalyticpsychotherapists and child psychotherapists was established in 1993 to maintainand encourage high standards of professional practice, training and selection. Wehave also ensured that in all our member societies codes of ethics and complaintsprocedures conform to the Human Rights Act.

The recent Psychotherapy Bill, introduced by Lord Alderdice, which has been goingthrough the House of Lords, marks an important initiative to ensure betterstandards of care through strengthening the self-regulation of the profession.

Coline CovingtonChair, British Confederation of Psychotherapists, London NW2

On the face of it, Wynne Godleys article provides sound ammunition for theincreased regulation of psychoanalysis. There is no guarantee, however, thatregulation and training will be a cure-all. As Andrew Samuels well knows (Letters, 8March), a substantial number of those who practise psychoanalysis and its next-door neighbour, psychoanalytic psychotherapy, are already regulated by the UKCouncil for Psychotherapy. Regulation has not solved the problem of poor standardsof education throughout the profession. How many psychoanalysts are aware thatWinnicotts formulation of the true and false self is highly problematic? To put theargument at its simplest: how can either the analyst or the analysand distinguishbetween what is true and what is false? Godley describes vividly and movingly theanguish caused by psychic conflict, yet all the states of mind he experiences aretrue of and about him. This is not a new point of view it is an obvious implicationof the work of Lacan or Post-Modern theory.

Kirsty HallLondon N10

Why did Winnicott, one of the most influential psychoanalysts since Freud, referpatients to Masud Khan even when he knew a great deal about Khans personal andprofessional problems? I have spent the last six years working on a biography ofMasud Khan and, as a practising psychologist and lay analyst, I would like to addsomething to Wynne Godleys account.

Masud Khan was Winnicotts principal disciple and together they helped to evolveanalytic technique at a time the 1960s when there was a general questioning ofdogma. Analysts in France, the US and London were challenging the idea thatchange occurred only through insight, and looking at the importance of relationshipsand environment. This seems so obvious now that it may be hard to remember atime when it was new. It was a period of experimentation, which might make iteasier to understand why Winnicott and others initially tolerated Khans unorthodoxbehaviour. In addition to his many problems, Khan was also an extremely talentedpsychoanalyst who had a reputation for saving patients who had been pronouncedincurable by other analysts. This reputation is supported by a number of analysandsI have interviewed, especially those from the period before Khans major



deterioration after Winnicotts death in 1971.

Khan often referred to himself as a paradox and people who knew him well tend toagree. He was a living example of Winnicotts theory that when we get access to thedeeper parts of a persons self, we find multiple selves which are incompatible witheach other. As Khan wrote, one can explicate a paradox, but one cannot resolve itthereby.

Linda HopkinsRadnor, Pennsylvania

I, too, had an encounter with Masud Khan when, on a trustworthy recommendation,I approached him towards the end of his life, not as a patient but as a traineepsychotherapist looking for a supervisor. His behaviour at the meeting was, to saythe least, eccentric; having some idea of what was appropriate in a training analyst,like Emma Tennant (Letters, 8 March) I took flight. However, my reasons forwanting to work with Khan were based on his undeniably brilliant writing onpsychoanalytic matters and I still recommend these to trainee psychotherapiststoday.

Salley VickersBrentford, Middlesex

Vol. 23 No. 7 5 April 2001

The prevailing response of the psychoanalytic community (in the broader sense) toWynne Godleys story (LRB, 22 February) is very predictable. How dreadful thatsuch things happened in the past! But look what weve done to ensure that theycould not happen now! However much we appreciate the earnestness with which thetherapists insist that these things will not happen again, and their well-intentionedattempts to put structures in place to ensure that this is so, the idea that suchmeasures will do much to raise the consciousness of psychotherapy and in thatsense to protect the public is comic.

Whatever else he did, Freud reminded us of the ubiquity of self-deception and theinfinite cleverness with which it clothes itself. Codes of ethics, established standardsof practice, systems of investigation, transparency and accountability are all verywell, but self-deception insinuates itself into these very structures, all in the name ofstandards. doesnt a professional set of standards enable a profession to forgetabout standards? the psychoanalyst and philosopher Jonathan Lear asks. It isdespite this new culture of strengthened self-regulation that openness of mind,existential vigilance and sceptical sensibility sometimes survive.

Robin CooperPhiladelphia Association, London NW3

Vol. 23 No. 8 19 April 2001

In her response to Wynne Godleys story (Letters, 22 March), Kirsty Hall appears toconfuse true with real. There can be no doubt that Godleys states of mind at thetime of his analysis with Masud Khan were real, but it is clear that they did notconstitute the truth of Wynne Godley (other than in the merely tautologous sensethat it is true that at the time these were real states of mind). Hall seems to thinkthat considerations of truth, in the sense of being able to distinguish between whatis true and what is false, are simply irrelevant. But however deeply and perhapsirresolvably vexed it may be, without some discriminating notion of truth the wholeenterprise of psychoanalysis collapses into being a remunerated hand-holdingexercise by what Ernest Gellner memorably described as merchants of hope. In thisscenario the truth of what you are or what you think you are doesnt matter as longas you come out of the analytic encounter feeling good about yourself. The logic ofthis blurring of true/false is potentially fatal; among other things it enables the stepwhereby the merchant of hope becomes, as in the case of Khan, a merchant ofabuse.

Christopher PrendergastCambridge



Vol. 23 No. 12 21 June 2001

I am currently on the couch for analysis, and would like to remind anyone who willlisten that the purpose of analysis, as Wilfred Bion often said, is to relieve mentalpain and I have been much relieved of mental pain by psychoanalysis. MikkelBorch-Jacobsen's criticisms follow on the heels of Wynne Godley's account of hisanalysis with Masud Khan (LRB, 22 February) as well as an earlier Borch-Jacobsenreview in similar vein (LRB, 13 April 2000). All these pieces purport to bedevastating critiques of analysis. They are not. Of course the LRB is not unusual inits faddish rejection of psychoanalysis, but then repetition is always a symptom ofneurosis.

Adam RobertsLondon N8

www.lrb.co.ukWynne Godley Saving Masud Khan: psychoanalysis LRB 22 February 2001

wynne godley · saving masud khan_ psychoanalysis · lrb 22 february 2001

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