Empathogens

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. Substances that promote feelings of emotional connection and empathy ; compounds that enhance social bonding and emotional openness ; chemicals known to induce heightened awareness of others' emotions and improve interpersonal understanding
2. Agents that facilitate increased emotional sensitivity and warmth toward others ; drugs that stimulate empathetic responses and reduce social barriers ; materials causing an enhanced sense of fellowship and emotional sharing
3. Psychoactive compounds that evoke profound empathetic experiences ; substances that trigger emotional closeness and mutual understanding ; agents promoting sympathetic feelings and improved emotional communication among individuals

Etymology: Ralph Metzner, an American psychologist, coined this term in 1983 to name a class of drugs that seem to increase empathy, the capacity to feel with another person. The word is a deliberate modern construction. It joins "empathy", itself borrowed from the Greek "empatheia" meaning "passion" or "affection", with a connecting "-o-" and the suffix "-gen", from Greek "-genes" meaning "producing" or "originating". Read literally, an empathogen is something that produces empathy. The plural "empathogens" simply refers to more than one such substance. Because the word was built from familiar parts, its meaning is fairly transparent to anyone who knows that "-gen" words name things that produce or generate something, as in "antigen" or "hallucinogen".

Synonyms: entactogens, psychedelics, empathic drugs

Antonyms: antagonists, depressants, hallucinogens