The Privacy of the Self

The Privacy of the Self was the first collection of papers showing the development of Masud Khan’s thinking over twenty five years of clinical work. He was nurtured in the tradition of Anna Freud, John Rickman and D.W. Winnicott, but his contribution to psychoanalytic literature was a distinctive and personal one. What emerges from this book is the natural and private crystallization of his experiences with his patients and teachers.As he says in his preface: Psychoanalysis is an extremely private discipline of sensibility and skill. The practice of psychoanalysis multiplies this privacy into a specialized relationship between two persons, who through the very nature of their exclusivity with each other change each other. The first thing I wish to say about my work reported in these papers is that my patients have helped me become and personalize my potential of thought, affectivity and effort into a way of life that I find deeply satisfying. Had I followed another career perhaps my life would have been more dramatic and varied, but certainly not fuller. My relation with my patients has taught me the humility and necessity of the need of the other for one to be and become oneself.