Receptionism is a position about where to locate the change. It holds that the bread and wine are not altered by consecration, that no presence attaches to them as objects, and that the faithful communicant nonetheless truly receives the body and blood of Christ in the act of eating and drinking. The elements are unchanged; the reception is real. Everything turns on the communicant and the faith brought to the table, and nothing turns on what is left over once the service has ended, which is why churches holding the position have historically kept no reservation of the sacrament and no adoration of the remaining elements.
The Thirty-Nine Articles of 1571 are where the position is usually located. Article 28 states that the body of Christ is given, taken and eaten in the supper only after a heavenly and spiritual manner, and that the means by which it is received is faith. Article 29 draws the consequence that gives the position its edge: the wicked, though they press the sacrament with their teeth, do not partake of Christ. That article is the clearest confessional line between the Anglican formularies and the Lutheran confessions, which hold that the unworthy receive the body and blood as truly as anyone else.
Receptionism sits close to the Reformed doctrine of a spiritual presence, and some writers treat it as a variety of that position rather than a separate one. Where the two are distinguished, the line drawn is that the Reformed account offers a mechanism, the Spirit lifting the communicant to Christ, while receptionism declines to offer one and confines itself to saying that the gift is given in the receiving.