Hopkins, Linda (Linda B. Hopkins)

PERSONAL:

Education: Brown University, B.A. (magna cum laude), 1969; Temple University, Ph.D., 1977.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Villanova, PA. E-mail—linda.hopkins@tui.edu.

CAREER:

Temple University Medical School, Department of Psychiatry, Philadelphia, PA, assistant professor, 1977-82, director of extramural and continuing education, 1979-82; psychologist in private practice, Philadelphia, 1982—; Clinical Associates Main Line (psychotherapy clinic), Wayne, PA, owner, 1994—. Union Institute & University, Cincinnati, OH, part-time faculty, 2007—; Philadelphia School of Psychoanalysis, trainer and supervising analyst.

MEMBER:

American Psychological Association, National Association for the Advancement of Psychoanalysis, Pennsylvania Psychological Association, Philadelphia Society for Psychoanalytic Psychology (secretary, 1988; president, 1990), Phi Beta Kappa.

WRITINGS:

False Self: The Life of Masud Khan, Other Press (New York, NY), 2006.

Contributor to Hungers and Compulsions: The Psychodynamic Treatment of Eating Disorders and Addictions, edited by J. Petrucelli and C. Stuart, Aronson (Northvale, NJ), 2001. Contributor to periodicals, including Psychiatry, Sex Roles, Dreamworks, Contemporary Psychoanalysis, Journal of Marriage and the Family, Women's Studies International Quarterly, and the Psychotherapy Patient.

SIDELIGHTS:

In False Self: The Life of Masud Khan, Linda Hopkins offers what critics considered a well-researched and sympathetic portrait of a controversial figure. Masud Khan, a Muslim, was born in Pakistan in 1924 and moved to England to attend university at Oxford. He became a psychoanalyst, studying with and being analyzed by influential British child psychiatrist D.W. Winnicott. Handsome, wealthy, and charming, Khan became a sought-after analyst. But he also became known for unprofessional behavior, perhaps the worst of which was engaging in sexual relationships with his patients. As Amy Bloom put it in her New York Times Book Review assessment, Khan was "a liar, a drunk, a philanderer, an anti-Semite, a violent bully, a poseur and a menace to the vulnerable." Though Hopkins writes about her subject with "generous forgiveness, insistent evenhandedness, patient understand and restrained judgment," Bloom observed that False Self fails to makes the case that Khan's life was essentially tragic and that much of his negative behavior may have stemmed from an undiagnosed bipolar disorder. A reviewer for Publishers Weekly found Hopkins's depiction of Khan "unnerving and sympathetic." Library Journal contributor E. James Lieberman considered False Self to be "essential" reading for "psychotherapists and historians" interested in the field of psychology after World War II.