According to Patrick Waldberg, Bataille asked the remaining members of Acephale to kill him at their last meeting on or around 20 October 1939. They refused to do so, and he dissolved the group immediately thereafter. He intended to offer himself as a sacrifice to found the myth of the group and thereby ensure the survival of the community. When they refused to do so, he accused them of having 'abandoned' him.

Stuart Kendall, in his new edition of Bataille's Guilty