psychotropism

Noun

psychotropism (countable and uncountable, plural psychotropisms)

1. The desire for or pursuit of altered states of consciousness.
   • 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.1984, Brian M. Stableford, Future Man, page 139
   • "Project MKULTRA” was the govemment's secret attempt to penetrate the occult interior of psychotropism—it appears to have failed miserably.1999, Journal of Cognitive Liberties - Volume 1, page 37
2. The alteration of one's mental state or brain structure.
   • It seems that N-methyl substitution tends unspecifically to increase psychotropism of different compounds without predetermining the quality of the effect being enhanced.1967, Edwin Dunlop, Psychosomatic Medicine, page 150
   • 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'.1993, J. H. Stewart, Analgesic and NSAID-induced kidney disease, page 51
3. The desire for mental stimulation and knowledge.
   • What is the explanation of this greatest of all the tropic or turning responses of nature – psychotropism?1921, George Park Fisher, George Burton Adams, Henry Walcott Farnam, The Yale Review - Volume 11, page 341
   • 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.1955, The Psychoanalytic Review, page 283