omphalopsychic

English

Etymology

Back-formation from omphalopsychite: see there for more. By surface analysis, omphalo- +‎ psych- +‎ -ic.

Adjective

omphalopsychic (not comparable)

1. (uncommon) Related to or characterised by navel-gazing (omphaloskepsis).
   • 1979, Francis Schiller, Paul Broca: Founder of French Anthropology, Explorer of the Brain, →ISBN, page 105:

     The hypnotic method, he added, was used by the sculptors of antiquity to make their models hold still, by the “omphalopsychic” monks of Mount Athos staring at their navel, by Indian fakirs converging their eyes on the tip of their nose, […]

   • 1992 [1841], Søren Kierkegaard, “The Concept of Irony: With Continual Reference to Socrates”, in Howard V. Hong, Edna H. Hong, transl., The Concept of Irony […], →ISBN, page 50:

     This also seems to suggest that Alcibiades was primarily in love with Socrates’ personality, his harmonious nature, which nevertheless fulfilled itself in a negative self-relation to the idea and an omphalopsychic staring at oneself.

   • 1993, Sharon Macdonald, “Identity Complexes in Western Europe: Social Anthropological Perspectives”, in Sharon Macdonald, editor, Inside European Identities: Ethnography in Western Europe, →ISBN, page 18:

     Reflexivity has become a decidedly fashionable subject in social anthropoogy since the mid-1980s, though it is still quite common for reflexivity to be thought of as either involving any autobiographical comments whatsoever or as omphalopsychic irrelevance (or both).

Related terms

• omphalopsychite

Noun

omphalopsychic (plural omphalopsychics)

1. (rare) Someone who engages in omphaloskepsis, a navel-gazer.
   • 1892 January, Ernest Hart, “Hypnotism and Humbug”, in The Nineteenth Century, volume 31, number 179, page 24:

     In many convents of the Greek Church it has been practised since the eleventh century, as it is still by the Omphalopsychics, with whom hypnotic reverie is obtained by steadily gazing at the umbilicus.

   • 1948, Lionel Goitein, Art and the Unconscious‎^[1]:

     Watts seems to say that man must turn in on himself in an involuntary act of introversion, when mind would contemplate self in a universe of his own creating (an omphalopsychic).

   • 1960 October 21, Stu Adam, “Adam’s Rib”, in The Carleton, volume 16, number 5, page 5:

     We were, as has been stated, travelling Omphalopsychics. Yes, yes… we’re coming to that. An Omphalopsychic is one who unravels the mysteries of the universe by contemplating his navel.