Assaulted Boundaries A Review of False Self: The Life of Masud Khan by Linda Hopkins

Hopkins engages her readers by addressing them directly. She makes clear her aim to present Masud Khan in a realistic fashion and does this admirably, describing his many strengths as well as his considerable weaknesses and misbehaviors. The author describes him as being brought up in a “feudal” atmosphere characterized by the sexual assault of children, physical brutality, and murder, a background from which Khan never seemed able to distance himself or recover. This helps make his later egregious behavior more understandable. Khan's father is portrayed as an absolutist tyrant who alternately indulged, humiliated, and terrorized his son. His mother was devalued as an ex-courtesan. She apparently was unavailable and perhaps addicted to opiates. The young boy was twice estranged from her. As his father's favorite son, he received greater than the traditional share of inheritance, resulting in the hatred of his half-siblings and the “deadly envy of his mother” (p. 17).

The decision to undergo analytic training was a comedy of errors. Khan went to London for personal analysis, not for psychoanalytic training, an avenue that John Bowlby, the president of the British Psychoanalytic