Psychoanalytic Ethics and Psychoanalytic Competence: Lessons from the Biographies of Masud Khan

Psychoanalysis, as Renik (2006) has recently emphasized, is not an intellectual exercise or an aesthetic indulgence pursuing insight for its own sake, but a form of therapy. It is a treatment modality that aims at helping unhappy, troubled, and at times emotionally damaged people to wrestle with their internal conflicts, overcome the deleterious effect of unfortunate life experiences, build the strengths they need to contend successfully with “the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune” (Shakespeare 1603, III, I, 58), and become more capable of realizing their potential for enjoying life, personally and interpersonally. It is not carried out for the benefit of the analyst but for the benefit of the patient, who is willing to undergo the rigors of analytic treatment and to pay a good deal of money for it in the hope of obtaining benefits that will justify the effort and the expense the treatment entails.

Two biographies of Masud Khan by Roger Willoughby and Linda Hopkins, reviewed in the preceding pages of this issue of The Psychoanalytic Quarterly by Manasi Kumar and Howard Levine, respectively, describe in distressing detail how easily the true purpose of psychoanalytic treatment can be lost sight of, with devastating effects for all concerned—the analysand, those with whom the analysand is interacting and will interact in the future, and the analyst. Salman Akhtar's thoughtful introduction, as well, describes how an analyst “of towering stature” can “turn into a fallen angel of disgrace.”