Book description
Perversions and borderline states were, by accident of fate, Masud
Khan's chief preoccupation in his clinical work during the last three
decades of his life. In an earlier volume, The Privacy of the Self, he
presented what he called the natural and private crystallization of his
experience with his patients and teachers; notably, in the latter
category, Anna Freud, John Rickman and D. W. Winnicott. In this later
book he takes his cue from Freud who, as he says, diagnosed the sickness
of Western Judaeo-Christian cultures in terms of "the person
alienated from himself". Masud Khan's basic argument, succinctly
stated in his Preface, is that "the pervert puts an impersonal
object between his desire and his accomplice. This object can be a
stereotype fantasy, a gadget or a pornographic image. All three alienate
the pervert from himself, as, alas, from the object of desire".
With its wealth of clinical and theoretical insights, Masud Khan's
Alienation in Perversions makes a major contribution to our
understanding of perversion formation. Its influence extends far beyond
the private discipline of psychoanalysis, for the subject explored is
one which occurs widely in modern life and literature. The concluding
chapter on pornography makes the point tellingly.
