Saving Masud Khan

The LRB Podcast

London Review of Books

Society & Culture

4.4 • 581 Ratings

🗓️ 18 December 2024

⏱️ 38 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Wynne Godley was by turns a professional oboist, a fellow of King’s College, Cambridge, an economist at the Treasury and a director of the Royal Opera House. Yet at thirty he found himself ‘living through an artificial self’ and turned to psychoanalysis for help. Masud Khan was a protégé of D.W. Winnicott and the darling of British psychoanalysis. He was also much else besides. In this unforgettable piece from 2001, Godley describes his baffling and disastrous sessions with Khan. Read by Duncan Wilkins. Find the original piece and further reading at the episode page: https://lrb.me/godleypod LRB Audio Discover audiobooks, Close Readings and more from the LRB: https://lrb.me/audiolrbpod Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	You're listening to the London Review of Books podcast. This week we have a reading of a piece from the archive, Saving Massoud Khan by
0:22.3	Wyn Godley, read by Duncan Wilkins. Win Godley, who died in 2010, worked at the Treasury between
0:28.9	56 and 1970, before becoming a fellow of King's College, Cambridge, and director of the university's
0:35.7	department of applied economics. He was the author with Mark's Department of Applied Economics.
0:40.8	He was the author with Mark Lavoie of Monetary Economics,
0:45.4	and he is often credited with anticipating the mass unemployment of the early 1980s,
0:50.1	the problems with monetary union in Europe, and the 2008 financial crash.
0:55.6	Briefly, a professional oboist in his use, he was later a director of the Royal Opera House.
1:03.3	This piece, describing Godley's disastrous encounter with psychoanalysis, was published in the LRB in 2001.
1:08.3	Duncan Wilkins, reading Saving Masood Khan by Wyn Godley.
1:13.6	Saving Masud Khan by Wyn Godley Saving Masud Khan by Wyn Godley This is the story of a disastrous encounter with psychoanalysis which severely blemished my middle years.
1:23.6	I was about 30 years old when I found myself to be in a state of terrible distress.
1:29.2	It was the paralysis of my will, rather than the pain itself, which enabled me to infer, using my head,
1:35.5	that I needed help different in kind from the support of friends.
1:39.8	A knowledgeable acquaintance suggested that I consult D.W. Winnicott,
1:43.4	without telling me that he was
1:44.7	preeminent among British psychoanalysts. I don't think that living through an artificial self,
1:51.7	which is what had got me into such an awful mess, is all that uncommon. The condition is difficult to
1:57.3	recognise because it is concealed from the world and from the subject with ruthless
2:01.7	ingenuity. It does not feature in the standard catalogue of neurotic symptoms such as hysteria,
2:08.3	obsession, phobia, depression, or impotence. And it is not inconsistent with worldly success
2:14.3	or the formation of deep and lasting friendships, the disjointed components of
	...

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