From Boston Review, December, 2002:
Return of the Repressed
In February 2001 the psychoanalytic world was shaken by a London Review of Books article by Wynne Godley, visiting scholar at Bard College’s Levi Economics Institute, professor emeritus of applied economics at Cambridge University, and onetime member of H.M. Treasury Panel of Independent Forecasters (the so-called Six Wise Men). “Saving Masud Khan” tells the story of Godley’s lengthy psychoanalysis with Mohammed Masud Raza Khan, the charismatic Anglo-Pakistani who—it was recently revealed—slept with and abused many of his patients. In Godley’s telling, he was essentially tortured by Khan from beginning to end. It was a “long and fruitless battle culminating in a spiral of degradation.”Here's "Saving Masud Khan" at the LRB:
“Within minutes of our first meeting, the therapeutic relationship had been totally subverted,” he writes. In later sessions Khan violated every conceivable boundary between analyst and patient. He assaulted Godley with verbal tirades (“And to think you people ruled the world!”). He gossiped freely about his A-list social life (Rudolph Nureyev, Julie Christie, Peter O’Toole, Mike Nichols) and his other patients, going so far as to arrange a liaison between Godley (who was happily married) and a female patient (Khan said they were “handmade for one another”). The three of them—two patients and their analyst—even played poker together (Khan cheated). In less jovial circumstances, Godley witnessed a drunken row between Khan and his wife, the Royal Ballet’s beautiful prima ballerina Svetlana Beriosova, which ended with her kicking Khan in the groin and then passing out in the front hall....MORE
Vol. 23 No. 4 · 22 February 2001
pages 3-7 | 6211 words
Wynne Godley
This is the story of a disastrous encounter with psychoanalysis which severely blemished my middle years.
I was about thirty years old when I found myself to be in a state of terrible distress. It was the paralysis of my will, rather than the pain itself, which enabled me to infer, using my head, that I needed help different in kind from the support of friends. A knowledgeable acquaintance suggested that I consult D.W. Winnicott, without telling me that he was pre-eminent among British psychoanalysts.Errrmmm, yes.
I don’t think that living through an artificial self, which is what had got me into such an awful mess, is all that uncommon. The condition is difficult to recognise because it is concealed from the world, and from the subject, with ruthless ingenuity. It does not feature in the standard catalogue of neurotic symptoms such as hysteria, obsession, phobia, depression or impotence; and it is not inconsistent with worldly success or the formation of deep and lasting friendships. The disjointed components of the artificial self are not individually artificial.
What is it like to live in a state of dissociation? In a real sense, the subject is never corporeally present at all but goes about the world in a waking dream. Behaviour is managed by an auto-pilot. Responses are neither direct nor spontaneous. Every event is re-enacted after it has taken place and processed in an internal theatre. On the one hand, the subject may be bafflingly insensitive but this goes with extreme vulnerability, for the whole apparatus can only function within a framework of familiar and trusted responses. He or she is defenceless against random, unexpected or malicious events. Evil cannot be countered because it cannot be identified.
The short personal story which follows is so familiar in its outline that it may seem stale, but I cannot explain how I allowed such strange things to happen to me unless I tell it.
My parents separated from one another, with great and protracted bitterness, at about the time I was born, in 1926, and I hardly ever saw them together. In infancy I was looked after, in various country houses in Sussex and Kent, by nannies and governesses as well as by a fierce maiden aunt who shook me violently when I cried. My mother, though frequently in bed with what she called ‘my pain’, was a poet, playwright, pianist, composer and actress, and these activities took her away from home for long and irregular periods of time. When she rematerialised, we had long goodnights during which, as she sang to me, I undid her hair so that it fell over her shoulders. She used to parade naked in front of me, and would tell me (for instance) of the intense pleasure she got from sexual intercourse, of the protracted agony and humiliation she had suffered when giving birth to my much older half-sister, Ann, who grew up retarded and violent (screamed, spat, bit, kicked, threw), and of her disappointment when my father was impotent, particularly on their honeymoon.....MORE
Previously:
Professor Wynne Godley: The Man Who Foresaw the Euromess Twenty Years Ago
London Times Obituary: "Professor Wynne Godley: economist"
"Embracing Wynne Godley, an Economist Who Modeled the Crisis"
The Genius of Wynne Godley: "Maastricht and All That"
"New Blog On Monetary Economics by Wynne Godley student "
