M. Masud R. Khan (1924–1989)

Masud Khan, the enfant terrible of psychoanalysis of the second half of the century, died on 9 June 1989, leaving behind a remarkable degree of hostility and criticism mostly arising from the publication of his last book, When Spring Comes [ The Long Wait, USA, Ed.]. The more than justified sense of revulsion inspired by that book seems to have ensured an everlasting tendency in people, in and out of psychoanalytic circles, to discuss his life and behaviour, mixed with speculations as to what he was really like. As Janet Malcolm so aptly put it in a 1989 review in The New York Times: 'when one compares this outrageous and repellent book with the sane and civilized Privacy of the Self, one can only assume that something has happened to Mr Khan in the intervening fifteen years'.

This obituary is an attempt to satisfy some of that curiosity even if, for reasons of discretion, it will be somewhat limited. Indeed, I cannot meet Khan's desire which he expressed in a diary note dated 15 December 1981, which reads: 'In a strange way, I am leaving behind materials which I hope someone will put together and that will constitute the VERITY of Masud Khan'.

He was born in 1924 in Montgomery (now Sahival), Punjab, and grew up in what he called a 'primitive' estate and cattle farm. His father, Khan Bahadur Fazaldad Khan, also born in Punjab, in 1850, served in the British Army as a soldier, retiring as a major. Having had little education, he set about studying veterinary science to help him with cattle breeding. He later acquired some knowledge of law in order to become a justice of the peace. He had nine sons and five daughters from three marriages before marrying Masud's mother, a Persian dancer with a son from a previous marriage. A son was born in 1923, Masud in 1924, and a girl in 1926 who died when 16 years old.

This fourth marriage had been strongly opposed by the other children, and perhaps this was the reason for the family moving to a small village, Lyallpur, nea