ABSTRACT
This chapter is essentially speculative: the reactions, behaviour, and phantasies of several patients lead me to reflect that there might be a connection between masochism on the one hand and, on the other, the belief, albeit in its perverted, its shadow form, in the worship of and surrender to a deity. In other words, although sacrifice, self-sacrifice, and expressions of humility are part of veneration and worship of God, the Spirit, it might be that if a part of this archetypal need becomes isolated, it becomes an end in itself. The main theme in many sessions was author preoccupation with death, his fear of death, his anger with death. For the worship of Artemis involved an annual event in which the most beautiful, most intelligent, most courageous, and most perfect youth was chosen to be her sacrificial victim by being beaten to death.
