Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-r5fsc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-24T16:40:37.550Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Reconciling an underlying contradiction in the Distancing-Embracing model

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 November 2017

Gerald C. Cupchik
Gerald C. Cupchik*
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, University of Toronto, Scarborough, ON Canada M1C 1A4, Canada. [email protected]/people/cupchik
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The Distancing-Embracing model proposes that negative emotions embedded in literary works can be rewarding. This is consistent with a holistic ontology in the German Romantic tradition. However, the application of cognitive psychology to explain experiences of aesthetic pleasure is problematic because it is founded on a mechanistic Enlightenment epistemology. The appreciation of negative emotions requires cognitive elaboration and closure, whereas hedonistic reward is contingent on the reader's needs, in the moment, for pleasure or distraction.

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Information
Behavioral and Brain Sciences , Volume 40 , 2017 , e356
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2017 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Arnheim, R. (1971) Art and visual perception. University of California Press.Google Scholar
Arnheim, R. (1985) The other Gustav Theodor Fechner. In: A century of psychology as science, ed. Koch, S. & Leary, D. E., pp. 856–65. McGraw-Hill.Google Scholar
Barrett, L. F. (2017) How emotions are made: The secret life of the brain. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.Google Scholar
Bullough, E. (1912) ‘Psychical distance’ as a factor in art and an aesthetic principle. British Journal of Psychology 5(2):87–118. Available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.2044-8295.1912.tb00057.x.Google Scholar
Burwick, F. (1991) Illusion and the drama: Critical theory of the enlightenment and romantic era. Pennsylvania State University.Google Scholar
Cupchik, G. C. (2002) The evolution of psychical distance as an aesthetic concept. Culture & Psychology 8(2):155–87. Available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1354067X02008002437.Google Scholar
Cupchik, G. C. (2016) The aesthetics of emotion: Up the down staircase of the mind-body. Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Danziger, K. (1997) Naming the mind: How psychology found its language. Sage.Google Scholar
Garner, W. R. (1962) Uncertainty and structure of psychological concepts. Wiley.Google Scholar
Izard, C. E. (1971) The face of emotion. Meredith.Google Scholar
Panksepp, J. (2007) Neurologizing the psychology of affects: How appraisal-based constructivism and basic emotion theory can coexist. Perspectives on Psychological Science 2(3):281–96.Google Scholar
Russell, J. A. & Barrett, L. F. (1999) Core affect, prototypical emotional episodes, and other things called emotion: Dissecting the elephant. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 76(5):805–19.Google Scholar
Schneider, H. J. (1995) The staging of the gaze: Aesthetic illusion and the scene of nature in the eighteenth century. In: Reflecting senses: Perception and appearance in literature, culture, and the arts, ed. Pape, W. & Burwick, F., pp. 77–95. Walter de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Winnicott, D. W. (1971) Playing and reality. Basic.Google Scholar