Wednesday, October 3, 2012

Psychological Novels Have Specific Intentions

By Janell Bowers


A famous author once claimed that all his books were psychological novels. He argued that they were lengthy narratives told through the eyes and words of characters and if these characters were credible the novel must be psychological at least in the sense that it depicted credible human behavior.

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.

Novelists do not produce works of science because they work imaginatively. Their purpose is to reflect reality rather than prove it. Psychologists choose to use scientific methods to discover human behavior. They set up experiments with animals and extrapolate from these what human behavior is like. Novelists use their imagination.

Imagination is essential in all works of fiction. Jane Austen imagines young men and women meeting, having difficulties and overcoming them. Her characters are very true to life and one can recognize their types hundreds of years after the story was first told. But Austen's intention is primarily to tell a tale of romance.

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.

A 'stream of consciousness' tale is told from the point of view of a protagonist who tells things as he sees them. The author must imagine himself entirely into the mind of his character and exclude himself as far as possible, following the imagined behavior of his protagonist. The technique has obvious advantages for a writer who wishes to exhibit human perception of a particular world view.

Another interesting type of psychological novel is that which attempts to develop suspense by telling a tale through the mind of a character. This may be a perverted or obsessive character whose interactions with the world around him became inexorably more intense, until a denouement is reached.

Psychological novels, like all similar works, attempt to entertain and instruct through the medium of fiction. They succeed on the first count if readers are able to suspend their disbelief and imagine that they are in the world of a novels as they read it. They succeed on the count of instruction if critics and ordinary readers know, after reading the work, that it is a slice of true life.




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