Olmsted's "essential theory" in a nutshell: "Olmsted realized that he had learned much about scenery from his father's silent appreciation of it, and soon comb

Olmsted's "essential theory" in a nutshell: "Olmsted realized that he had learned much about scenery from his father's silent appreciation of it, and soon combined his own experience with the theories of Zimmermann and Bushnell to produce his own theory of the effect of scenery on man. Scenery, he decided, worked by an unconscious process to produce relaxing and 'unbending' of faculties made tense by the strain noise and artificial surroundings of urban life. The necessary condition for such an experience was the absence of distractions and demands on the conscious mind. The effect came not as a result of examination, analysis or comparison, nor of appreciation of particular parts of the scene; rather, it came in such a way that the viewer was unaware of its workings."