psychological novel

American  

noun

1. a novel that focuses on the complex mental and emotional lives of its characters and explores the various levels of mental activity.

---

Etymology

Origin of psychological novel

First recorded in 1850–55

Example Sentences

The psychological novel gained prominence as the 19th-century world became mapped and colonized, the mind offering a new realm for discovery.

From The Wall Street Journal • Oct. 8, 2025

In a sense, she’s a person who always has a psychological novel going on inside her head, and where would the psychological novel be without Dostoyevsky?

From The New Yorker • Jan. 16, 2017

Another depressing, well-written psychological novel by a morbid author of the introspective school.

From Time Magazine Archive

The hero of a psychological novel is the man whose reactions are most important.

From Time Magazine Archive

I mean to state that some of the finest plays of the modern age differ from a psychological novel in nothing but the superficial form of telling.

From The Author's Craft by Bennett, Arnold