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Research into the cases behind central psychoanalytic theories is increasingly beginning to surface. Linda Hopkins, a supervising analyst at the Philadelphia School of Psychoanalysis, has interviewed widely in collecting material for her biography of the British
psychoanalyst Masud Khan (1924-1989). On the basis of these interviews she has written a paper detailing the failures in his training analysis with D. W. Winnicott.
Her article, published in last year's Contemporary Psychoanalysis, sets the stage for a tragedy:
After a period of enormous professional success and world renown, after marriage to a woman he professed to have loved and the forming of intense and gratifying friendships, Khan died in 1989, alone except for his servants and a few horrified friends. He had destroyed his career through scandal and ruined his body through decades of alcoholism and heavy smoking. Winnicott … had failed to help his analysand to overcome his pathology in order to live a good life.
This is a conclusion most people she interviewed shared. It was in horror and disgust that they saw Khan's demise. But Hopkins does not stop here. She tries to find ways of examining the role of Khan's analysis with Winnicott. How well did Winnicott practise what he taught: that before being able to use the relationship with the analyst creatively (object use), the patient has a desire to destroy the analyst and, at the same time, see him or her survive as a separate person. Unless such a transition occurs, the analytic relationship remains unconscious and solely based on regressive projections (object relating).
Reviewing several other cases, Hopkins shows that he did not practise his dictum very well, that in fact, he avoided aggressive interactions with his patients throughout his career, not just with Khan. Winnicott, the article asserts, had to be seen as the positive mother and be held in high regard by all his analysands.
For some, this may not seem like such a terrible