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Reading the preface and foreword to Linda Hopkins and Steven Kuchuck's skilfully edited book, there is an instant feeling that it was nigh on miraculous that this book ever made it to publication. Indeed, its journey to print feels entirely fitting given the tumultuous ‘fall’ the diaries document.
Masud Khan, for those who have heard of him, is a somewhat notorious character in the history of psychoanalysis. I say ‘for those who have heard of him’ because, as the opening of the book and the many disclaimers testify, he is a character who the psychoanalytic institutions have tried to forget. There may well be good reason for this, not least of all the last of his books in 1988, which spouts blatant
antisemitism, misogyny and racism; it reads like the dying convulsions of someone with lethal toxins flowing through their bloodstream. This final book was in complete contrast to his scholarly, reflective and ground-breaking previous books in which Khan interrogates the already established psychoanalytic literature, drawing on his reading of philosophy, European literature and Eastern literature, yet at all times remaining connected to the analysand with whom he was working and being very much aware of his own vulnerabilities. This contrast in his work confronts the reader with an obvious question which in some ways this book goes towards answering; if there were a ‘fall’ that happened to Khan, or as I would describe it, more of a toxic poisoning, the pertinent discussion is what caused the fall or more directly, what was he poisoned by and by whom?
The diaries, which have been painstakingly edited, document Khan's years working as a psychoanalyst, editing and writing for various publications and working on papers with Winnicott. The book can be read on many levels, including as an insight into the lives of the rich and famous as Khan journeys back and forth across continents, commenting on events of the day such as the investiture of Prince Charles, the Apollo moon land