Why cannibalism was a turn-on for Dale Bolinger and ‘Eva’

Analyst’s view: was he identifying with his mother, hoping to seduce his prey into total submission?

Dale Bolinger
(Image credit: Kent Online)

It was September 2012 and Dale Bolinger, a 56-year-old NHS nurse and father of three, was waiting for a Eurostar train at Ashford international train station to meet ‘Eva’, the 14-year-old chat-room girl who had agreed to meet him for sex – and then to be eaten by him.

‘Eva’, who claimed to be Mexican and living with a cousin in Germany, never turned up and we still don’t know her true identity. But thanks to leads from the FBI, Bolinger was arrested in February 2013.

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is a Jungian analyst in private practice in London. She is former Chair of the British Psychoanalytic Council and a Training Analyst of the Society of Analytical Psychology, of the British Association of Psychotherapists, and of the London Centre for Psychotherapy. She is co-editor with Barbara Wharton of Sabina Spielrein: Forgotten Pioneer of Psychoanalysis, published by Routledge in 2003 and co-editor with Paul Williams, Jean Arundale and Jean Knox of Terrorism and War: Unconscious Dynamics of Political Violence, published by Karnac in 2002.