ABSTRACT
According to an early and extremely influential view, the best way to understand what’s going on in people's thought experiment is in terms of ‘psychical distance’. It’s probably easiest to understand psychical distance by analogy to other kinds of distance. The jealous husband’s problem would seem to be a case of under-distancing, since he’s reading too much of the play into his own experience. Narrowing psychological distance a little is artistically desirable, since it promotes closer engagement with the work: it’s good for audiences to read their own experiences into a play or story, for example. The notion of ‘disinterested’ attention likewise seems to stipulate a special attitude where none is necessary. The jealous husband’s appreciation of Othello isn’t aesthetic because it’s interested—he’s reading his own experience into the play, and vice versa.
