In prison, people can have original bodily experiences that echo their subjective history and the acts for which they are incarcerated. This is the case for Julien, convicted of domestic violence against his wife. During our interviews, pictorial mediation helps him to shape and put into words his bodily experiences, particularly those of his heart. He tells a “story of the heart”: his heart as an organ, but also as a place where he feels for his wife and mother. Julien has the impression that his heart is disappearing, but he also feels he is already dead. He explains that he lives in detention with the “Nightmare”, a ghostly figure who condenses subjects from the world of the living and the world of the dead. On the basis of this clinical encounter in a research context, and the transference-counter-transference experiences involved, this article proposes to develop a conceptualisation of these original experiences relating to the heart. The creativity of the clinician-researcher will then be called upon to illustrate their specificity. We will move from the black hole in the heart to the other side of life and the other side of birth, and then take account of Julien’s potential for creativity.