ABSTRACT
The goal of sacrifice as it is commonly understood is to support and preserve life. However, in the context of trauma therapy, the call to sacrifice is often experienced as implying the very opposite because it is a call to sacrifice some aspects of the self, and it is therefore experienced as a threat and is consequently resisted. Kalsched notes that psychic splitting and dismemberment are matters of life and death, necessities for survival; yet splitting is a “violent affair.” 1 He says that one of the “most disturbing findings” about trauma is that “the traumatized psyche is self-traumatizing.” 2
