Dictionary.com
Thesaurus.com
Showing results for psychological novel. Search instead for Psychological+Motives.

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

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

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

The psychological novel is apparently no modern invention after all.

From Time Magazine Archive

Miss Schmitt has chosen to tell it not as a historical or Biblical but a psychological novel.

From Time Magazine Archive

This psychological novel, like a tragedy, awakens in the reader not only pity, but terror.

From Tales from the German Comprising specimens from the most celebrated authors by Various

Vocabulary.com logo
by dictionary.com

Look it up. Learn it forever.

Remember "psychological novel" for good with VocabTrainer. Expand your vocabulary effortlessly with personalized learning tools that adapt to your goals.

Take me to Vocabulary.com