2007 Gradiva Award Winner

Winner of the 2006 Goethe Award for Psychoanalytic Scholarship

False Self is the definitive biography of one of the most engaging and controversial figures of British psychoanalysis: M. Masud R. Khan. This talented and deeply conflicted individual is brought to life by Linda Hopkins. Her meticulous research included the use of Khan’s personal Work Books and countless interviews with his peers, relatives, and analysands. The result is a balanced and rich portrait of a complex human being.

Notorious for his flamboyant personality and, at first, widely acknowledged as a brilliant clinician, M. Masud R. Khan (1924–1989) exposed through his candor and scandalous behaviour the bigotry of his proponents-turned-detractors. The son of a wealthy landowner in rural India (now Pakistan), Khan grew up in a world of privilege radically different from the Western lifestyle he would adopt after moving to London, where we was closely connected to some of the most creative and accomplished people of his time, including Donald Woods Winnicott, Anna Freud, Robert Stoller, Richard Redgrave, Julie Andrews, Rudolph Nureyev, and many more. Khan’s subsequent downfall reveals not only his psychic fragility but also the world of intrigues and deceptions in the psychoanalytic community of the time.

In telling the story of this provocative man, Linda Hopkins makes use of unprecedented access to Khan’s peers, relatives, and analysands in order to provide an in-depth and balanced account of Masud Khan as a talented and deeply conflicted man.

Publisher: Karnac Books

Published: November 2022

Format: Paperback

Pages: 560

Dimensions: 15.24 x 2.54 x 22.23 cm