Nouns denoting goals
- abience
- (psychology) an urge to withdraw or avoid a situation or an object
- acathexis
- (psychoanalysis) a lack of cathexis; a condition in which significant objects or memories arouse no emotion in an individual
- account
- grounds
- adience
- (psychology) an urge to accept or approach a situation or an object
- agromania
- an intense desire to be alone or out in the open
- alcoholism
- an intense persistent desire to drink alcoholic beverages to excess
- cacoethes
- an irrational but irresistible motive for a belief or action
- cathexis
- (psychoanalysis) the libidinal energy invested in some idea or person or object
- Christ Within
- a divine presence believed by Quakers to enlighten and guide the soul
- compulsion
- an urge to do or say something that might be better left undone or unsaid
- compulsion
- an irrational motive for performing trivial or repetitive actions, even against your will
- conscience
- motivation deriving logically from ethical or moral principles that govern a person's thoughts and actions
- deterrence
- a negative motivational influence
- dynamic
- an efficient incentive
- egomania
- an intense and irresistible love for yourself and concern for your own needs
- ethical motive
- motivation based on ideas of right and wrong
- ground
- a rational motive for a belief or action
- hedonism
- the pursuit of pleasure as a matter of ethical principle
- impulse
- an instinctive motive
- incentive
- a positive motivational influence
- incitation
- something that incites or provokes; a means of arousing or stirring to action
- irrational impulse
- a strong spontaneous and irrational motivation
- irrational motive
- a motivation that is inconsistent with reason or logic
- itchy feet
- very strong or irresistible impulse to travel
- kleptomania
- an irresistible impulse to steal in the absence of any economic motive
- libidinal energy
- (psychoanalysis) psychic energy produced by the libido
- life
- a motive for living
- logomania
- pathologically excessive (and often incoherent) talking
- mental energy
- an actuating force or factor
- monomania
- a mania restricted to one thing or idea
- necromania
- an irresistible sexual attraction to dead bodies
- occasion
- reason
- onomatomania
- obsession with a particular word which the person uses repeatedly or which intrudes into consciousness
- phaneromania
- an irresistible desire to pick at superficial body parts (as in obsessive nail-biting)
- pyromania
- an uncontrollable desire to set fire to things
- rational motive
- a motive that can be defended by reasoning or logical argument
- sense of duty
- a motivating awareness of ethical responsibility
- signal
- any incitement to action
- small voice
- an inner voice that judges your behavior
- Thanatos
- (psychoanalysis) an unconscious urge to die
- trichotillomania
- an irresistible urge to pull out your own hair
- wherefore
- the cause or intention underlying an action or situation, especially in the phrase `the whys and wherefores'