Sacrifice

1. Etymology

Sacrifice (to make sacred; also forgo / renounce) psychologically names the need to give up the world of childhood, often signaled by regression of energy. Related: renunciation; self; god-image; religious-attitude.

2. Plain summary

Sharp: give up retrospective longing for childhood’s effortless bliss; looking back, even the starry sky becomes the enclosing mother—and from renouncing that image arises the world as we know it. Samuels restores the older sense to sanctify: forgoing an ego position for one of greater meaning; the price paid for consciousness; gift symbolizing part of personality, given as if to be destroyed; relation to a god-image / self demand—not archaic superstition but cost of being human. Meaning in loss can reverse disintegration.

Examples (exhaustive house list for this Index lemma — common sacrifice motifs named across Jung’s essays and standard Jungian lexica; not a claim that Jung’s CW contains only these):
give up childhood world; renounce retrospective longing; mother-enclosure of the backward glance; sanctify / make sacred; forgo ego position; price of consciousness; gift as if destroyed; god-image / self relation; kinship with regression / religious-attitude / initiation / transformation.

3. Academic elucidation

In analytical psychology sacrifice is renunciation that sanctifies—developmental and religious-functional, not mere deprivation. Lexica (Sharp; Samuels pp. 132) supply paraphrase Do not invent loci.

4. Lexicon

Sharp (1991)

Sacrifice. Psychologically, associated with the need to give up the world of childhood, often signaled by the regression of energy. … One must give up the retrospective longing which only wants to resuscitate the torpid bliss and effortlessness of childhood. … from the renunciation of this image, and of the longing for it, arises the picture of the world as we know it today.

(Sharp, 1991) — cites CW 5 ¶643, ¶646.

Samuels, Shorter & Plaut (1986) — sacrifice p. 132 (spill 133)

sacrifice … original meaning of the word which is to sanctify, make sacred… One consciously forgoes an EGO position in favour of another which appears to hold greater MEANING… Sacrifice is the price we pay for CONSCIOUSNESS… Jung sees the necessity for sacrifice not as a remnant of archaic superstition but as an essential part of the cost we pay for being human…

(Samuels, Shorter, & Plaut, 1986/2013, pp. 132–133)

5. CW concordance — sample, not exhaustive

This recognition, that one must give up the retrospective longing which only wants to resuscitate the torpid bliss and effortlessness of childhood, before the “heavenly ones” wrench the sacrifice from us (and with it the entire man), came too late to the poet.
(Jung, 1912/1967, CW 5, p. 663, ¶643) Dual regression untouched.

To the extent that the world and everything in it is a product of thought, the sacrifice of the libido that strives back to the past necessarily results in the creation of the world. For him who looks backwards the whole world, even the starry sky, becomes the mother who bends over him and enfolds him on all sides, and from the renunciation of this image, and of the longing for it, arises the picture of the world as we know it today.
(Jung, 1912/1967, CW 5, p. 664, ¶646)

See also: regression; religious-attitude; self; god-image; repression; sacred-marriage; coniunctio.

References

Jung, C. G. (1967). Symbols of transformation. In H. Read, M. Fordham, G. Adler, & W. McGuire (Eds.), The collected works of C. G. Jung (R. F. C. Hull, Trans.) (2nd ed., Vol. 5, pp. 663–664, ¶643, ¶646). Princeton University Press. (Original work published 1912)

Samuels, A., Shorter, B., & Plaut, F. (1986). A critical dictionary of Jungian analysis. Routledge.

Sharp, D. (1991). Jung lexicon: A primer of terms & concepts. Inner City Books.