Altruistic Surrender

Altruistic Surrender is a pathologized version of empathy. Where empathy seeks to temporarily identify with others for the sake of understanding and sensitivity, altruistic surrender carries this to an extreme, where the distinction between self and other is lost. This blending of self with other is of a pathological nature, not of the enlightened form where one recognizes self within collective unity; it is a transference of self. Altruistic surrender is a maladaptive preoccupation with another resulting from faulty boundaries. Altruistic surrender is the manifest opposite of narcissism and is the extreme overcorrection away from narcissistic tendencies. It sacrifices one’s own development for the advancement of another. (source: Moze, M.B. (2007). Surrender: An Alchemical Act in Personal Transformation. Journal of Conscious Evolution, 1-46.)