Case Study by Graeme Macrae Burnet

Author:Graeme Macrae Burnet
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Saraband
Published: 2021-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

Braithwaite III: Kill Your Self

By the autumn of 1965, when the author of the notebooks contained in this volume presented herself at Ainger Road, Braithwaite was approaching the height of his notoriety, but his ascent had not been a smooth one.

On completion of his doctoral thesis, Braithwaite turned down a lecturing position at the university. He had had enough of Oxford. Ever since his run-in with Colin Wilson three years previously, he had felt that life was elsewhere. In June 1959, he hitch-hiked to London, found himself a bedsitting-room in Kentish Town and took a series of menial jobs. These ranged from labouring on building sites to warehousing, but Braithwaite was incapable of regular time-keeping or accepting authority and was invariably sacked after a week or two.

By the end of the year, the novelty of this aimless lifestyle had palled and he wrote to R.D. Laing, who was at that time Senior Registrar at the Tavistock Clinic, a psychotherapeutic facility in Beaumont Street. In his letter, Braithwaite described how he had been inspired to return to Oxford to study psychology after seeing how Laing went about his work at Netley. He would, he said, like to train under him. It was a unique moment of deference on Braithwaite’s part. Laing replied recommending that if he was serious about a career in psychiatry he should first take a degree in medicine. Laing’s letter was courteous and his advice reasonable, but Braithwaite felt that he was belittling him. He wasn’t used to such treatment. He had assumed that Laing would recognise his talents and immediately offer him a job. He wrote back outlining some of the ideas from his thesis, and expressing the view that in order to understand the mind, he didn’t need to know how to cure a child of diarrhoea. Laing did not reply.

At the beginning of 1960, Braithwaite ran into Edward Seers, whom he had first met in the company of Colin Wilson. In the parlance of the day, Seers was a ‘colourful character’, well known around Soho. Even at the height of summer, he dressed like an Edwardian aristocrat, sometimes in plus fours, never without a cravat or bow tie. He was no more than 5’5” and, when inebriated enough (which was often), was not averse to propositioning men in bars, despite the very real risks such behaviour then entailed. According to Braithwaite’s account in My Self and Other Strangers, this was how Seers reintroduced himself in a pub in Dean Street. Braithwaite, who was at that time earning a pittance working at Covent Garden fruit and vegetable market, told him he could do what he liked as long as he bought him a pint. The two men retired to a corner of the bar and fell to talking. While Braithwaite was not exactly in the vanguard of political correctness, he was open-minded regarding matters of sexuality (‘Why should it bother me what another man wants to do with his cock? I do what I want with mine.

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