Dictionary

omphalopsychic en · ADJ

Etymology

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

Meanings

1. (not-comparable, uncommon) Related to or characterised by navel-gazing (omphaloskepsis).
   • 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). 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:
   • 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, […] 1979, Francis Schiller, Paul Broca: Founder of French Anthropology, Explorer of the Brain, →ISBN, page 105:
   • 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. 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:

Relateds

omphalopsychite

omphalopsychic en · NOUN

Etymology

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

Meanings

1. (rare) Someone who engages in omphaloskepsis, a navel-gazer.
   • 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. 1960 October 21, Stu Adam, “Adam’s Rib”, in The Carleton, volume 16, number 5, page 5:
   • 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. 1892 January, Ernest Hart, “Hypnotism and Humbug”, in The Nineteenth Century, volume 31, number 179, page 24:
   • 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). 1948, Lionel Goitein, Art and the Unconscious:

Forms