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.

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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

The psychological novel is apparently no modern invention after all.

From Time Magazine Archive

An interest in the psychological novel, and in James as its exponent, led Edel to Paris in the 1920s.

From Time Magazine Archive

You see, in writing a psychological novel the author has to be careful of shades of feeling in his delineation of the characters.

From The Come Back by Wells, Carolyn