You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
This commentary concurs with Ilene Philipson’s thesis that the concept of self-states is a key to the understanding of the “radical otherness” of Masud Khan; that a feudal self-state often set him apart from others and may have impeded his personal psychoanalysis with Winnicott. However, it is argued here that the tragic failure of Khan’s analysis was not caused by inability to resolve the “otherness” of a dominant self-state—as Philipson holds—but instead by a failure to collate Khan’s multiple self-states into a unified whole self. To achieve this unification, analysis would have had to access Khan’s traumatized child-self (the origin of his self-fragmentation), and a level of split-off outrage would have had to be addressed. This level of aggression was neither confronted nor worked through with Winnicott or Khan’s other analysts. It is also ventured here that Khan’s antisemitic outpouring at the British Psychoanalytic Society (BPAS)—however, unacceptable—could be seen as a transferentially misdirected expression of split-off rage triggered by Khan’s sense of betrayal by his British “family.” It is further suggested that Philipson’s concept of “radical otherness” might be understood as a pertinent but limited version of Khan’s own concept of “alienation.” This “alienation” derived not only from Khan’s personal feelings of loss and psychic pain but also expressed a concern for modern culture, both West and East, which he found to be increasingly mechanized and depersonalized.