TYPES OF NOVEL - PSYCHOLOGICAL

     Psychological novel signifies a type of novel in which the plot is centrally preoccupied with delineating the workings of the psyche of the characters that make up the plot. Developed in the early years of the 20^th century, the novelists Dorothy Richardson and James Joyce are widely identified as bringing this variety of fiction into vogue. Notable works in this genre include Mrs. Dalloway (1925) and To the Lighthouse (1927) by Virginia Woolf and Ulysses (1922) by James Joyce.

 

1.       For the proponents of psychological novels, the most pristine form of reality is not what one observes externally, but the impulses that animate the conscious mind of an individual. Consequently, their plots rather than focusing on depicting events or incidents that take place in the material world, concentrate on foregrounding the various contents of the psyche of the characters involved. This is to say, it is not what the characters do, their actions, but their mental processes that constitutes the staple of a psychological novel.

 

2.       To fulfil their objective of representing reality in its allegedly purest form, psychological novelists took their basic cue for depicting psychic reality from the concept propounded by the American psychologist William James termed stream of consciousness. According to this theory, the conscious mind of a human subject is perceived as essentially a fluid domain in which various impulses such as ideas, thoughts, memories and feelings, exist in a constant state of flux, ebbing and flowing like in a stream. Thus, the mental processes represented in the plot of a psychological novel, far from exemplifying an organized sequence, typify a random phenomenon of free association lacking any apparent sense of pattern or logic. Through deliberately undermining facets such as coherence and wholeness in their composition, the psychological novelist were successfully able to call into question indeed do away with any palpable impression of authorial presence from the narrative scheme.

 

3.       It is notable that unlike in other novelistic types, story takes a backseat in a psychological novel. Indeed for all practical purposes, it could be even suggested that story is essentially nonexistent in this form of fiction. The basic motto of a psychological novel is simply that it is ultimately obtaining a fuller understanding of one’s own self that genuinely matters, and not what happens in the material world. So rather than dialogues between characters, it is monologue, specifically interior monologue, exemplified by the thought processes characterizing the psyche that takes precedence.

 

4.       Montage which is basically a cinematic technique in which various images are successively represented at random, is often utilized by psychological novelists in order to capture the constantly shifting terrain of the conscious mind. The use of this technique underscores what may be rightfully dubbed yet another innovative feature found in this form of fiction namely visual representation. To explain, unlike traditional novels in which the plot is essentially told or recounted, in a psychological novel it is instead shown or telecasted. It is not so much narration or descriptions that occupies the plot but representations of images.