psychotropism

English

Etymology

psycho- +‎ -tropism

Noun

psychotropism (countable and uncountable, plural psychotropisms)

1. The desire for or pursuit of altered states of consciousness.
   • 1984, Brian M. Stableford, Future Man, page 139:

     When the level of illicit drug use is added to this, it becomes apparent that psychotropism is something which affects something like half the population in America.

   • 1999, Journal of Cognitive Liberties - Volume 1, page 37:

     "Project MKULTRA” was the govemment's secret attempt to penetrate the occult interior of psychotropism—it appears to have failed miserably.

   • 2000, Jane Fountain, Gloria Greenwood, Understanding and Responding to Drug Use, page 144:

     In this way, we established a trajectory of youth psychotropism based on drug users' life histories.

2. The alteration of one's mental state or brain structure.
   • 1967, Edwin Dunlop, Psychosomatic Medicine, page 150:

     It seems that N-methyl substitution tends unspecifically to increase psychotropism of different compounds without predetermining the quality of the effect being enhanced.

   • 1993, J. H. Stewart, Analgesic and NSAID-induced kidney disease, page 51:

     Analgesics do not only influence pain receptors, but also the subjective experience of pain, thus exhibiting a latent psychotropism, as when a patient states that a certain analgesic 'does him good'.

   • 1996, W. M. Edgar, D. M. O'Mullane, Saliva and Oral Health, page 58:

     It assays the following functions: depression, anxiety, obsession/compulsion, interpersonal sensitivity, hostility, phobic anxiety, paranoid ideation and psychotropism.

   • 2003, Indian Journal of Chemistry: Organic including medicinal:

     Of the various heterocyclic systems, the indole nucleus has been reported as a common denominator of psychotropism and is of great value in the field of medicine and biochemistry.

   • 2015, Ronald William Maris, Pillaged: Psychiatric Medications and Suicide Risk:

     ...different factors like psychotropism (neuronal growth) or neuronal changes (both growth and depletion), and other organic considerations.

3. The desire for mental stimulation and knowledge.
   • 1921, George Park Fisher, George Burton Adams, Henry Walcott Farnam, The Yale Review - Volume 11, page 341:

     What is the explanation of this greatest of all the tropic or turning responses of nature – psychotropism?

   • 1955, The Psychoanalytic Review, page 283:

     I believe that this peculiarity offers the bias toward the development of a dynamic property of sexual psychotropism which makes for biological reasons for the child (growing individual) to gravitate toward the opposite sex.

   • 1982, Frederick M. Brown, R. Curtis Graeber, Rhythmic Aspects of Behavior, page 373:

     According to Fraisse (I966), “biogenic motivations," which control adaptive behaviors necessary for survival (psychotropisms, escape phenomena, aggression, etc), are among the most archaic and involve defense mechanisms that implicate a high degree of vigilance (i.e., so-called states of overarousal).

Related terms

• psychotropic