PhronesisGenuine self-sacrifice for others is a moral virtue. The martyrdom complex is a wrong attractor W_martyr in which the person's identity and self-worth are organized around suffering for others — where sacrifice is not an occasional moral act but the constitutive mode of existence. The martyr does not help from abundance but from depletion, and experiences the removal of burden not as relief but as identity threat.
We apply the Displacement Framework to formalize the martyrdom complex. The sovereign self-care ground state S0_sovereign is defined as the capacity to meet one's own needs while caring for others, with Neff's self-compassion as the foundation for other-compassion. W_martyr is maintained through two interlocking mechanisms: the suffering-as-worth equation (I am worthy in proportion to my sacrifice — religious and cultural amplifiers, Brown's vulnerability-shame connection, relief would remove worth) and the self-abnegation loop (self-neglect → exhaustion → resentment → guilt about resentment → increased sacrifice → deeper self-neglect, with Horney's hidden hostility as covert aggression).
Nine formal propositions cover: S0_sovereign as sovereign self-care (P1), W_martyr as sacrificial identity wrong attractor (P2), the suffering-as-worth equation (P3), the self-abnegation loop (P4), secondary gains and covert social control through indebtedness (P5), developmental origins in parentification and narcissistic family systems (P6), burnout and collapse as W_martyr endpoint (P7), cumulative Phi_martyr across identity, somatic, relational, and social domains (P8), and return paths including self-compassion, schema therapy, and feminist analysis of gendered self-sacrifice norms (P9).