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Modernism and the Making of Masud Khan Benjamin Poore Thesis

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Modernism and the Making of Masud Khan Benjamin Poore Thesis ! ! Modernism and the Making of Masud Khan ! ! ! ! Benjamin Poore! ! ! ! Thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the require- ments of the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !!"1 ! ! ! Statement of originality! ! I, Benjamin Poore, confirm that the research included within this thesis is my own work or that where it has been carried out in collaboration with, or sup- ported by others, that this is duly acknowledged below and my contribution indicated. Previously published material is also acknowledged below.! ! I attest that I have exercised reasonable care to ensure that the work is original, and does not to the best of my knowledge break any UK law, infringe any third party’s copyright or other Intellectual Property Right, or contain any confiden- tial material.! ! I accept that the College has the right to use plagiarism detection software to check the electronic version of the thesis.! ! I confirm that this thesis has not been previously submitted for the award of a degree by this or any other university.! ! The copyright of this thesis rests with the author and no quotation from it or information derived from it may be published without the prior written consent of the author.! ! Signature: Benjamin Poore! ! Date: 24/09/2014! ! ! !!"2 Abstract! ! Masud Khan was one of the most controversial psychoanalysts of the post-war period. This thesis argues that modernist literature and culture are central to Khan’s conception and realisation of his psychoanalytic work in Britain from the late nineteen forties onwards. His lifelong engagement with modernist art and writing also shapes Khan’s vision of himself as a ‘self-exile’, and provides the framework for his own imagining of contemporary political life in Europe, Pakistan, and Britain. His psychoanalytic work, thoroughly shaped by the writing of T.S. Eliot, James Joyce, and the painting of the cubists, is a complex response to his own sense of his postcolonial modernity, and the rapid social and political changes of the period. By taking Khan as a case study this project explores the intersection of modernist writing and the end of Empire, especially concerning questions of cosmopolitanism, exile, race, and the politics of modernism. It aims to enrich our sense of the history modernism by exploration of this highly idiosyncratic figure. The explicitly modernist bent of Khan’s writing also opens up new readings of his psychoanalytic contemporaries Donald Winnicott, Michael Balint, and Marion Milner that highlight the continuity of their writings with many aspects of modernist culture.! ! More specifically, the study examines the shaping effect of specific ideas and themes in modernist writing on Khan’s conception of subjectivity, whilst also reflecting on the meaning of these translations of cultural life into psychoanalytic theory. Explored are: Joyce’s articulations of ‘epiphany’ and exile, as well as his writing on race and Jewishness; T.S. Eliot’s concept of ‘tradition’ and his writing on culture and community, especially as it allows Khan to imagine his own ‘feudal’ past and ethnic distinctiveness in postwar London; and the painting of Georges Braque and Joan Miró in Khan’s figuration of new and radical forms of self-experience in psychic life. ! ! !!"3 Contents ! ! List of Illustrations! 5! Acknowledgements ! 6! Introduction! 8! Chapter one ! Epiphanic Psychoanalysis: Joyce in Khan’s Consulting Room! 39! Chapter two ! Feudal Psychoanalysis: T.S. Eliot and the uses of Tradition! 86! Chapter three! “Exiled in upon his ego”: The politics of privacy! 139! Chapter four ! “Somnambulant doodles”: Masud Khan and European Modernist Art! 197! Chapter five ! “Swarthy of taint”: Masud Khan, Race and Modernism! 271! Afterword! Something to Tell You! 354! Bibliography! 364! ! ! !!"4 List of Illustrations ! ! ! Fig.1 Library of Masud Khan. Front endpaper and flyleaf, James Joyce, Ulysses (1932)! Fig.2 Library of Masud Khan. Front Endpaper and flyleaf, James Joyce, Ulysses (1932)! Fig.3 ‘Old Master, Modern and Contemporary Prints’, catalogue entry, Georges Braque, La Liberté des Mers, 1959, lot 87! Fig.4 Georges Braque, Le Ciel Bleu (1959). The Geoffrey Gorer Archive, postcard from Masud Khan to Geoffrey Gorer, 22/12/1969.! Fig.5 Henri Matisse, Blue Nude (1952). The Geoffrey Gorer Archive, postcard from Ma- sud Khan to Geoffrey Gorer, 13/03/1965.! Fig.6 ‘Old Master, Modern and Contemporary Prints’, catalogue entry, Joan Miró/Tris- tan Tzara. Parler Seul. 1948-1950, lot 254! Fig.7 ‘Old Master, Modern and Contemporary Prints’ , Joan Miró/René Char. Nous Avons. 1959, lot 251! Fig.8 Masud Khan and Svetlana Beriosova, photographed by Henri-Cartier Bresson. Getty Images.! Fig.9 Library of Masud Khan,, bookmark: business card from Radio Knörzer, Stuttgart, Ulysses (1946)! Fig.10 Library of Masud Khan, bookmark: Complimentary Ticket, Oversea Language Centre, James Joyce, Ulysses (1946)! Fig.11 Library of Masud Khan, rear endpaper, Ulysses: The Corrected Text (1986)! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !!"5 Acknowledgements ! ! The Arts and Humanities Research Council generously supported this research by means of a studentship. The Queen Mary Postgraduate Research Fund also made money available for the research trips key in the writing of this project. The Richardson Seminar at the History of Psychiatry Department in the Weill- Cornell Medical School in New York also kindly supported two lectures based on this research with honoraria. I must also show my gratitude to the staff at key archives, namely: the Hellenic Society of Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy, The UCLA Special Collections Library, the National Art Library (London), and the Oskar Diethelm Library (New York). ! ! This project would have proven insurmountable were it not for the ex- traordinary support and commitment of my two supervisors, Prof. Jacqueline Rose and Dr. Rachael Gilmour, who were by turns generous, assiduous and in- tensely thoughtful. Thanks must also go to Prof. Javed Majeed, whose input in the early stages of the work was vital. Friends and colleagues at Queen Mary and outside were key interlocutors throughout (although some of them may not know it). Due thanks are: Emily Hogg, Clare Whitehead, Helen Tyson, Harriet Curtis, Niall Gildea, Suzanne Hobson, Bill Schwarz, Peter Howarth, Katy Price, Natalie Pollard, Sarah Pett, Dan Herron. Thanks must also go to the administra- tive and office staff in the Department of English at Queen Mary.! ! The unfailing and unconditional support from my family has been ex- traordinary. Thanks must also go to my students at Queen Mary, who have al- ways reminded me of the importance of clarity and the heartfelt excitement that is the real motivator of this work. Some special mentions: Benjamin Madden has been there throughout, and is still essential. Thomas Langley always pro- vided valued counsel. Michael Pryke ensured that we got up to our usual tricks. Only Rosie Langridge could have cultivated the capacity in me that I needed to undertake my studies, and this work is dedicated to her. ! ! ! ! ! ! !!"6 ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !!"7 Introduction! ! At the end of the interview, he drove me slowly part of the way home in his Armstrong Siddeley. In the car he produced a book of poems by James Joyce from the pouch in the door and told me that he read them 1 ! when he was stuck in traffic jams.’ ! Wynne Godley, ’Saving Masud Khan’! ! !Economist Wynne Godley’s 2001 account of his treatment with the con- troversial émigré psychoanalyst Masud Khan stimulated heated discussion in the aftermath of its publication.2 This study is inaugurated by one detail from the vignette excerpted here: Khan’s book of Joyce’s poems. Masud Khan’s biog- raphers all argue that Khan was captivated by European literature: for Linda Hopkins it is William Shakespeare who taught Khan “to be psychologically re- flective…to put feeling into words”.3 He was also captivated, Hopkins suggests, by Dostoyevsky, and she notes furthermore his interest in identifiably mod- ernist writers: Woolf, Joyce, T.S. Eliot, Kafka, Thomas Mann, and D.H. Lawrence, amongst others.4 This thesis, however, argues for the centrality of modernist culture - especially the writing of James Joyce and T.S. Eliot, and the 1 Wynne Godley, ’Saving Masud Khan’, London Review of Books, Vol. 23 No.4 (22 Feb- ruary 2001), p.4. 2 In addition to some thirteen letters published in the LRB pages in the following months, Robert Boynton, an American journalist of psychoanalysis, published two pieces in late 2002 and 2003 responding to Godley’s essay. Robert Boynton, ’The Inter- pretation of Khan’ The Boston Globe, December 15 2002, and ‘The Return of the Re- pressed: Psychoanalysis’ Fallen Angel’, Boston Review, January 2003. Julia Borossa also notes, in a recent essay, Khan’s increasing visibility outside psychoanalytic circles in the last decade: ‘The extensions of Psychoanalysis: Colonialism, Post-Colonialism, and Hospitality’ in Psychoanalysis and Politics: Exclusion and the Politics of Representation ed. by Lene Auestad (London: Karnac, 2012), pp. 231-232. 3 Linda Hopkins, False Self: The Life of Masud Khan (London: Karnac, 2007), p.13. Roger Willoughby also identifies Khan’s passion for literature early on in his study Masud Khan: The Myth and the Reality (London: Free Association Books, 2005), pp.14-15. 4 Hopkins, p.455. !!"8 painting of cubism and surrealism - in the formation of Khan’s psychoanalytic writing and identity as a “self-exile” in postwar London. The work of these modernists gives clear shape to Khan’s conception of human subjectivity, to the ideals of his psychoanalytic theory, and provide a conceptual and cultural framework for him to imagine his own attitudes and responses to his complex ethnic, political and historical backgrounds, and his experiences as a migrant from 1946-1989 in London. Khan is a reader of high European modernist litera- ture in the decades following its peak: the collision of these works with his par- ticular political and historical circumstances also reveals the ambivalent rela- tionship certain canonical modernist texts have with the end of Empire.
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