psychic distance

or psychical distance

noun

1. the degree of emotional detachment maintained toward a person, group of people, event, etc.

Example Sentences

The pandemic meant he had psychic distance from his public persona, and physical distance from the trappings of fame; the resulting album takes the introspection present on his previous projects and digs deeper.

From New York Times

After that, Ms. Secrest said, Mr. Sondheim strived to maintain “a safe psychic distance” from women making overtures, “imagined or real.”

From New York Times

Briscoe despairs at how much love she has for Mrs. Ramsay, yet how immense the psychic distance between them is.

From New York Times

If much of this accounting is plainly true in the abstract, those who knew him say, it also elides some finer points of Mr. Biden’s arc: his boundless personal ambition, his canny relationship-building as a political novice and, quite often, his conspicuous psychic distance from the activist fervor of the times as he plotted a path to office.

From New York Times

“I was married, I was in law school,” he told reporters once, explaining his psychic distance from the antiwar fervor of his contemporaries.

From New York Times