I Ate His Heart: A Forensic Psychologist’s 12 Years Treating a Cannibal
What does a forensic psychologist learn after more than a decade treating a man who killed another person, cut out his heart, cooked it with onions and canned vegetables, and performed a Catholic-inflected ritual over the body? In this Halloween episode of Fascinating Nouns, I sit down with Dr. Nathalie Von Zelowitz — author of I Ate His Heart, published by Feral House — to find out.
Von Zelowitz has spent 30 years working in the French prison system, treating some of the most dangerous and psychologically complex individuals in the country. Her book follows her work with Bernard, a man whose crime was rooted not in psychopathy but in a deeply primitive response to perceived threat — a belief that by consuming his victim’s heart, he could absorb his power and neutralize the danger of the “evil eye.” It is a story about the origins of civilization, the psychology of taboo, and what it actually means to rehabilitate someone who has done the unthinkable.
The conversation covers the Armin Meiwes case and consensual cannibalism, Freud’s Totem and Taboo and the founding myths of human civilization, the surprising parallels between cannibalism and Catholic transubstantiation, the ethics of AI as a safe outlet for dangerous urges, and whether Bernard — now approaching possible release to a halfway house — is truly a changed person.
I Ate His Heart is available now at feralhouse.com and wherever books are sold.
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