THE MAN WHO WANTED TO COOK HIS MOTHER

Rights sold to Korea (Green Knowledge)

Dr Bodon-Bruzel has been working as a psychiatrist in high-security and prison environments for over twenty years.
In this unique book, she describes her experiences of extreme clinical situations with the mentally ill whom society is quick to dismiss as dangerously insane.
After the first part of the book, which covers the realisation of her vocation and then her training, Dr Bodon-Bruzel reveals some the most strikingly violent and emotional sessions she has had with patients. We meet the man who wanted to marry a dead woman, another who mistook his mother for a Chinese serial killer, the woman who was convinced her baby was the devil, and another who slept clutching her lover’s severed hand. And then there’s the man who thought he could make planes fall out of the sky and the boy who came from the moon…
Who are the dangerously insane? What motivates their behaviour? How does society cope with them? What are their chances of changing? Or recovery? How can we limit the possibility of them relapsing?
All questions that the author answers, shedding new light on this kind of patient, as she continues to seek the nugget of humanity in every one of them.

Magali Bodon-Bruzel is a psychiatrist and runs a combined unit comprising the psychiatric department of Fresnes prison and a hospital wing specially adapted for inmates with mental health problems.

Régis Descott is a novelist whose most notable publications to date are Obscura and Pavillon 38 (Lattès), a psychological thriller inspired by Dr Bodon-Bruzel.