Introduction: Must We Burn Masud Khan?

Abstract

Following the publication of a first instalment of the 39 Work Books of M. Masud R. Khan in November 2022 and the recent donation to the Freud Museum London of the full original correspondence between Khan and Wladimir Granoff, and between Khan and Victor Smirnoff, this essay serves the dual purpose of ensuring that Khan’s memory is being kept alive and informing its readership of the newly available archival documents. It briefly retraces the history of Khan’s conflicts with the British Psychoanalytical Society up to the destruction, in July 2019, of the Khan archives that were in the possession of the International Psychoanalytical Association. In addition, the author recounts how he came into possession of the letters Khan exchanged with Granoff and Smirnoff, and why it was decided to establish a Khan archive at the Freud Museum London. The prospect of this new archive being supplemented with the letters from Khan to his second wife, Svetlana Beriosova, and a full copy of the Work Books is also discussed.