Meaning

(philosophy) Primarily focused on the mind or spirit, especially as opposed to the body..

Definitions by Sense

1. (philosophy) Primarily focused on the mind or spirit, especially as opposed to the body.
2. (psychology, tourism) Of a tourist: tending to avoid adventures and risks, preferring the familiar; self-inhibiting.
3. (psychology, tourism) A tourist who tends to avoid adventures and risks, preferring the familiar.

Example Sentences

I have confessed that I feel drawn to you by many psychocentric influences.

For the issue between realism and subjectivism does not arise from a psychocentric predicament—a difficulty of conceiving of objects apart from any consciousness—but rather from the much more radical 'ego-centric predicament,' the difficulty of conceiving known things to exist independently of my knowing them.

My view is psychocentric in that a judgment which appears to have an objective reference is found psychologically to have a reference, unsuspected by the person judging, to himself. But an account of it is not a complete psychocentric exposition until one or two gaps are filled in. […] I have chosen to illustrate the psychocentric concept by means of right rather than good merely because this concept has been taken as the more fundamental in modern ethics.

[T]his alienation was a result of the introduction of rational calculation and power as a socially and economically determining factor, which implied the elimination of the Christian (and older) psychocentric traditions, faiths, social and personal relations.

But there is a fundamental difference between Greek and Gothic sculpture, despite the very similar treatment of draperies and the human form. To the Greeks, the face was merely part of the body. The Gothic makes it the 'window of the soul'. Gothic faces are psychocentric, dominated by the soul, which speaks through the eye.

In most psychocentric religions, the cosmic forces or gods not only create and control physical processes, they are often embodied themselves; in physiocentric religions the cosmic forces, however mindless, create human consciousness and determine human will.

Surrogationalism holds that words stand for things or ideas, and therefore emphasizes the function of language. […] He [Roy Harris] likewise divides surrogationalism into two types, "reocentric", which "supposes that the things words stand for are to be located 'out there' in the world external to the individual language-user", and "psychocentric", which "supposes that what words stand for is to be located internally, that is to say in the mind of the language-user"[…].

In the work of individual theorists, psychocentric and reocentric assumptions are often combined in various ways. If you think that the word copper is to be defined by reference to the actual properties of a certain metal, your definition will be reocentric. But if you take it to be defined by reference to certain conceptions of, or beliefs about, a metal (whether such conceptions or beliefs are mistaken or not), your definition will be psychocentric.

Word Forms

• more psychocentric
• most psychocentric
• psychocentrics

Related Words

When Should You Use Psychocentric?

Use psychocentric when its meaning, tone and grammar fit the full sentence. A synonym is not always a direct replacement.

Practice This Word

Frequently Asked Questions