The Evolution of Psychical Distance as an Aesthetic Concept

The problem of psychical distance refers to the relationship that a person has with an aesthetic object or work. Two basic traditions can be distinguished that have played a meaningful role in describing the underlying processes. The British Empiricist and Enlightenment traditions established the idea that the ‘real’ objective properties of aesthetic works engage viewers and evoke feelings of pleasure. The Romantic tradition placed a greater emphasis on interpretive activity in recipients who ‘willingly suspend disbelief’ and temporarily enter the ‘fictive’ worlds of poetry and drama. Writing in the early 20th century, Edward Bullough produced the idea of ‘psychical distance’, which combines both personal involvement and an awareness that the object or event is a cultural artifact. As the 20th century unfolds, we witness the death of the ‘aesthetic object’ as such and the emergence of a view that accommodates artists, aesthetic artifacts and receivers as open-ended and interacting systems. The complementary role of the realist and constructivist viewpoints is emphasized.