case study graeme macrae burnet pdf

Graeme Macrae Burnet

278 pages, Hardcover

First published October 7, 2021

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Braithwaite was born in Darlington in 1925 and, from the scant information available, appears to have had a brief period of celebrity in the mid-1960s If there is a recurring theme through the cases he presents though, it is that his clients are traumatised not by their eccentricities themselves, but by the stress of concealing them; of being forced to present different personae to different audiences. Braithwaite’s remedy is to embrace the idea of ‘being several’ (a phrase he uses repeatedly): to give up the idea that one persona is any ‘truer’ than any of the others. Once one has thrown off the idea of a ‘hierarchy of selves’ one can happily be whoever one wants, whenever ones wants. Subjecting oneself to therapy from Braithwaite must have been terrifying. Reading about it is tremendously entertaining.

He describes this new way of being as ‘schizophrening’. As the decade wore on, this would become an idea perfectly in tune with the be-whoever-you-want-to-be mood of the time, and copies of Kill Your Self would be soon found in the back pocket of every student and bar-room philosopher. ‘Phrening’ (or sometimes ‘phreening’) passed into beatnik argot, and the slogans ‘Don’t be yourself: phree yourself!’ or the more succinct ‘Don’t be: phree!’ were graffitied on the walls of university campuses up and down the land. The concept also gave rise to the short-lived Phree Verse movement in which often acid-fuelled performers channelled their various selves into a spiralling cacophony, until the different personae melded into one incomprehensible but ‘authentic’ stream of consciousness. Ironically, more than one participant in these happenings would later find themselves recovering in psychiatric facilities.

Yes, I'm the great pretender

I think people will Google Collins Braithwaite and think he is real, because I write about him in a documentary style. ... When you write in a documentary format it signifies truth to the reader, or reality. Whereas when [a book is written] in the first person, there’s a much stronger feeling that you don’t need to believe what you’re reading and that the [character] may be misleading you. ... It’s fascinating to me, because when we read novels, we know it’s not real; yet what we seek from a novel, or what I seek from a novel, is a feeling of reality. In order to immerse yourself in a novel I think you have to feel that it is real, even though we know that it’s not true, it’s all made up.

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Graeme Macrae Burnet

“A novel of mind-bending brilliance.” Hannah Kent

“I have decided to write down everything that happens, because I feel, I suppose, I may be putting myself in danger.”

London, 1965 . An unworldly young woman believes that a charismatic psychotherapist, Collins Braithwaite, has driven her sister to suicide. Intent on confirming her suspicions, she assumes a false identity and presents herself to him as a client, recording her experiences in a series of notebooks. But she soon finds herself drawn into a world in which she can no longer be certain of anything. Even her own character.

Case Study was longlisted for the  2022 Booker Prize , shortlisted for the  Ned Kelly International Crime Prize  and for the  Gordon Burn Prize and named by the New York Times as one of 100 Notable Books of the Year .

“ The defining essence of Burnet’s work … is as much about exploiting the possibilities of the novel form as it is about blurring the boundaries between appearance and reality.” Nina Allen, The Guardian

“Burnet captures his characters’ voice so brilliantly that what might have been just an intellectual game feels burstingly alive and engaging.” Jake Kerridge, The Telegraph

“A page turning blast, funny, sinister and perfectly plotted.” James Walton, The Times

You can order a copy from your local bookshop or from bookshop.org or find out more here .

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• Fiction - Psychological

Graeme Macrae Burnet offers a dazzlingly inventive - & often wickedly humorous - meditation on the nature of sanity, identity & truth itself,  by one of the most inventive novelists writing today.

‘ I have decided to write down everything that happens, because I feel, I suppose, I may be putting myself in danger.’

London, 1965 . An unworldly young woman believes that a charismatic psychotherapist, Collins Braithwaite , has driven her sister to suicide. Intent on confirming her suspicions, she assumes a false identity & presents herself to him as a client, recording her experiences in a series of notebooks. But she soon finds herself drawn into a world in which she can no longer be certain of anything. Even her own character.

Case Study is a game of cat-and-mouse between therapist and patient, between truth & deception, & between author & reader. It is a novel seething with secrets & teasing questions about the nature of identity itself, an enthralling, playful & layered depiction of 1960s society & the radical psychiatry propounded by R. D. Laing .

" The defining essence of Burnet’s work to date is to be found in this kind of literary gamesmanship, a brand of metatextuality that is as much about exploiting the possibilities of the novel form as it is about blurring the boundaries between appearance & reality… Burnet has always delighted in undermining such easy assumptions, & in Case Study he ups the stakes still further, providing a veritable layer cake of possible realities to get lost in…Entertaining & mindfully engrossing in equal measure. " —  The Guardian

Best known for his dazzling Booker- shortlisted second novel, His Bloody Project (2015), Burnet is also the author of a trilogy set in France & written in a style influenced by the Belgian novelist Georges Simenon : The Disappearance of Adèle Bedeau , (2014),  The Accident on the A35 (2017), &   A Case of Matricide (2024).

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Graeme Macrae Burnet

01 November 2022

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