Monday 1 October 2012

Psychological Novels Belong In A Specific Literary Category

By Janell Bowers


Novels are defined as narratives of some length. The length is a factor because they are not short stories which deal with a small slice of life, but with characters who develop in the course of a plot that may be quite complicated. A famous author argued once that all works of any merit are psychological novels because they are told from the points of view of credible characters.

A mark of human intelligence is that the world is organized in categories. This helps the mind to distinguish between the concrete and the abstract. In the field of literature carious works are organized according to the characteristics that they exhibit. Novels are all works of prose fiction but within that category there are various sub categories.

When authors focus on the interior workings of the minds of fictional characters they can be safely said to be trying to write psychological novels. The writer's intention is an important element in the book that he creates. If he succeeds in depicting behavior that is both credible and instructive then he may have succeeded.

Fiction writers employ the imagination rather than science to depict how human beings behave but that does not mean that they are off the mark. Trained psychologists will often be able to verify that the way characters in fiction behave is either psychologically authentic, or otherwise.

Romance tales tell of characters who belong to different genders coming together despite difficulties as people do. Jane Austen's characters are driven by exactly the same sort of prejudices that do drive people and they have ego needs that are recognized as true to real people. However, Austen's primary intention is to tell romantic stories.

The writers of action or adventure tales also have clear intentions. Their purposes are to entertain by writing stories that move rapidly between phases of action, rising and falling with increasing intensity until a climax is reached, preferably on the last page. Development of characters who truly reflect human behavior can impede the the adventure writer's purpose and so he may choose to employ a wooden, or flat character who always behaves in a predictable way.

The stream of consciousness technique of writing is eminently suitable for depicting the workings of an individual's mind. The story takes the form of an interior monologue that depicts exactly what is going on in the mind of a central character. The author tries to inject himself into the person that he is both depicting and developing a narrative through.

Both action and insight are sometimes combined in suspense thrillers. Characters who may be dangerously deranged or obsessive may engage in behavior that is credible but dangerous, leading inevitably to a dramatic conclusion. Such narratives may reflect on issues at the heart of psychology, such as the difference between sanity and insanity.

The best novels in any literary canon succeed in entertaining and instructing. In the case of psychological novels the entertainment is provided in depicting, through a fresh and interesting tale, exactly how human behavior is. Such entertainment is instructive and so the purpose of literature, as laid out by experts through the ages, is achieved.




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