Notes on an Interview with M. Masud R. Khan

Abstract

In this article, I explain the background of my historic interview, published in this issue of Psychoanalysis and History, with M. Masud R. Khan. Originally, four interviews with Khan were conducted and excerpts from each were chosen to construct the interview as published in this journal. I describe setting up the four interviews that took place in Khan’s flat in London. My goal in the first of these interviews was to discuss Khan’s observations of Donald W. Winnicott, but, after that, the interviews focused on Khan’s own experiences. I consider the question of how truthful Khan was in the published interview, in the light of Khan’s admission that he had a habit of ‘spinning yarns’ and presenting ‘fictions.’ One of the main topics of the interview is Khan’s meeting with John Bowlby soon after Khan, in his early twenties, moved to London from British India. The story, as Khan tells it, is dramatic. I shared with Bowlby what Khan had said, and Bowlby in a letter questioned Khan’s account. I present what Bowlby wrote to me about the meeting between Bowlby and Khan.