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The blotchy, blurry cover reflects the blotched, blurry life of Masud Khan, subject of this studious, thoughtful biography. Roger Willoughby unveils some truths from the posturings, confabulations and actual contributions to psychoanalysis of the multi-layered personalities of a mis-fit whose life, he once suggested to me, aspired only to the truths of literature — perhaps his only enduring love and legacy. Khan was quite frank about having no need for any other kind of truth, rationalizing, ‘all fictions are true for the person who fabricates them, since they reflect an inner necessity’ (p. 243).
One of the clearest things to emerge from this overview of one of the most troubled, troubling and disreputable of individuals in the history of psychoanalysis is just what a gifted whopper of a whopper-teller he was; and how this demeaned the genuinely important work that he did .
Anaïs Nin wrote: ‘My diary is a mirror telling the story of a dreamer who, a long long time ago went through life the way one reads a book’. Even Khan's Work Books [modelled on Anaïs Nin's Diaries, 1931-1974] although initially