PSYCHOACTIVE

Dictionaries will tell us that “psychoactive” refers to the effects on the mind of drugs. The effects typically mentioned are changes in the nervous system which alter perception, mood, consciousness, cognition or behavior. The drugs indicated are psychoactive drugs, psychopharmaceutical drugs, and psychotropic drugs. The word came into use in the 1940s and has reached its maximal use in the latest analysis (Google, 2019).

I use the word differently. By psychoactive I mean the unexpected, autonomous activation of the other at odd angles to one’s conscious intentions. The activation may manifest in dreams, visions, synchronicities, strange and inchoate body sensations, visual or auditory perceptions, feelings and thoughts.

My use of other here is meant in place of the general use of the word unconscious. The word other carries a sense of phenomenological animation. I further characterize it as the presentational psyche because these experiences are “presented” to ego consciousness. I have further characterized this as involving the invitational psyche because these experiences have a sense of inviting the participation of the conscious ego in further acts of imagination and creativity.

More on this post at fexandcoo.website where the relationship between psychoactive and narrative is a key question.

You may find my essay, “Appassionato for the Imagination,” to be useful. See Russell A, Lockhart. Appassionato for the Imagination. In Murry Stein and Thomas Arzt (Eds.) Jung’s Red Book for Our Time: Searching for the Soul under Postmodern Conditions, Asheville: Chiron Publications, 2017.