We study the asymptotic behaviour of a d-dimensional self-interacting random walk (X n ) n∈N (N := {1, 2, 3, . . .}) which is repelled or attracted by the centre of mass G n = n −1 n i=1 X i of its previous trajectory. The walk's trajectory (X 1 , . . . , X n ) models a random polymer chain in either poor or good solvent. In addition to some natural regularity conditions, we assume that the walk has one-step mean driftfor ρ ∈ R and β ≥ 0. When β < 1 and ρ > 0, we show that X n is transient with a limiting (random) direction and satisfies a super-diffusive law of large numbers: n −1/(1+β) X n converges almost surely to some random vector. When β ∈ (0, 1) there is sub-ballistic rate of escape. For β ≥ 0, ρ ∈ R we give almost-sure bounds on the norms X n , which in the context of the polymer model reveal extended and collapsed phases.Analysis of the random walk, and in particular of X n − G n , leads to the study of real-valued time-inhomogeneous non-Markov processes (Z n ) n∈N on [0, ∞) with mean drifts of the formwhere β ≥ 0 and ρ ∈ R. The study of such processes is a time-dependent variation on a classical problem of Lamperti; moreover, they arise naturally in the context of the distance of simple random walk on Z d from its centre of mass, for which we also give an apparently new result. We give a recurrence classification and asymptotic theory for processes Z n satisfying (0.1), which enables us to deduce the complete recurrence classification (for any β ≥ 0) of X n − G n for our self-interacting walk.