Distancing

Abstract

Etymologically, distance comes from the Latin distāntia: ‘standing apart’, hence meanings of separation, distance, remoteness, difference, diversity. In daily life people or objects can be ‘placed at a distance’, ‘made to appear distant’, ‘kept distant from’, or ‘outrun’. In figurative speech distance expresses degrees of remoteness, as in ‘ideal disjunction, mental separation’. In interpersonal relations distance signifies detachment in interaction, ‘keeping and knowing one’s distance’, or simply an aloof or deferential attitude. In psychology it designates reactions for escaping engaging, in therapy and special education it is technique used to help with building identity and communication through symbols and referential language. In combat sports distancing is a technical terminus for the appropriate selection of distance between oneself and a combatant throughout an encounter. In dramatic art distancing may designate an aesthetic principle, delineating the boundaries of fiction and reality through the mental faculty referred to as psychic distance (Bullough), or it can be a description of a poetics, including uses of stylistic devices, such as rhetoric figures or distancing effects (Shklovsky, Brecht, Heathcote).