Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The doctrine that there is a fluid diffused throughout all nature, animating equally all living and organized beings, and that the difference which appears in their actions comes of their particular organization.
  • noun The character of being psychic or mental.
  • noun The study or the theory of so-called psychic phenomena, that is, of telepathy, clairvoyance, spiritistic phenomena, mediumship, etc.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun (Philos.) The doctrine of Quesne, that there is a fluid universally diffused, end equally animating all living beings, the difference in their actions being due to the difference of the individual organizations.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun philosophy The old doctrine that there is a fluid universally diffused, and equally animating all living beings, the difference in their actions being due to the difference of the individual organizations.

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Compare French psychisme.

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Examples

  • If you try to separate off manifestations which are the same in kind though differing in degree, according to the fineness of the matter which is employed, if you try to separate them off, you will always regard what you call psychism -- that is, astral and mental manifestations in the subtler bodies -- in an artificial and unwise manner.

    London Lectures of 1907 Annie Wood Besant 1890

  • And if you are prepared to say that, then by all means turn aside from psychism, but do not at one and the same time encourage intellectuality on the physical plane and denounce what you call psychism on the others, because that is mere folly.

    London Lectures of 1907 Annie Wood Besant 1890

  • He took advantage of the fact that Tibet is closed territory and that Tibetan monks are naturally secretive and predisposed to so-called psychism and anything of a super-normal nature.

    Jimgrim Mundy, Talbot, 1879-1940 1931

  • "psychism" in a quite illegitimate way, and the popular use of the term is illegitimate.

    London Lectures of 1907 Annie Wood Besant 1890

  • However, I part company with Chalmers when he starts speculating about pan psychism.

    Are Changes Brewing and How Does the Mind Fit In? 2008

  • This entails a thoroughgoing pan-psychism in which for Mulla Sadra all existents are sentient beings that aspire to be "more intense" than they are, to a higher ontological level.

    Mulla Sadra Rizvi, Sajjad 2009

  • Reassure yourself that psychism is not a special gift possessed by a select few but, rather, is part of your heritage as a child of the universe.

    CREATE YOUR OWN FUTURE Jennifer Ann Daddio 2003

  • Reassure yourself that psychism is not a special gift possessed by a select few but, rather, is part of your heritage as a child of the universe.

    CREATE YOUR OWN FUTURE Jennifer Ann Daddio 2003

  • She knows the psychism of patterns and evolves them with strict regard for the pictural aspects in them which save them from banality as ideas.

    Adventures in the Arts Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets Marsden Hartley

  • These pictures might also be called expositions of psychism in color and movement.

    Adventures in the Arts Informal Chapters on Painters, Vaudeville, and Poets Marsden Hartley

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