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The role of fictional characters in psychological exploration, personal
experiences, emotional responses
Chapter in Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience · March 2019
DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.14350.43844
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The role of fictional characters in psychological
exploration, personal experiences, emotional
responses
P. Kathleene Quinn
Reading fictional literature can be a way of learning about the world and the human
condition – a claim explicated by Schick (1982) and empirically confirmed by, for
example, Marsh, Butler, and Umanath (2012). An aspect of this is the use of fiction for
educational purposes. In this study, we navigate through the eyes of the writer as the
narrative tool, allowing us to enter into a new dimension, particularly in the story of “In
Time and with Water.” Evaluating predicament and causes in a given plot while
identifying the struggles of emotional disorder through the lens of a character saw
benefits for theoretical understanding and self-awareness. Using fictional characters
strategically benefits the increase of learning environment, stimulating in education
setting. Our favorite fictional characters from books and movies often display an
impressive and wide range of psychological attributes, both positive and negative. We
admire their resilience, courage, humanity, or justice, and we are intrigued by other
characters who show signs of personality disorders and mental illness—psychopathy,
narcissism, antisocial personality, paranoia, bipolar disorder, and schizophrenia, among
many other conditions. The aim of this commentary is to explore the usage of literature,
fictional characters in understanding psychological attributes as well as personal human
experiences. Other motivations of these characters that include examples of both accurate
and misleading depictions of psychological traits and conditions, enabling readers to
distinguish realistic from inaccurate depictions of human behavior.
1
Introduction
It has been argued that engagement with the arts and humanities might increase health
professionals’ capacity to empathically listen to patients and help them to understand
and handle their own reactions to others so that their emotions can support rather than
hinder engagement with patients (e.g., Charon, 2001; Lewis, 2011). Rolfe (2002)
argued both that health professionals need the capacity to identify with their clients on
an affective level and that this capacity might be increased through reading fiction. Such
reading experiences can provide an understanding of others that is unobtainable in
scientifically oriented texts. This perspective has been termed medical humanities (e.g.,
Charon, 2001; Chiapperino & Boniolo, 2014). In line with this, there is an increasing
interest in using fictional literature in the education of health professionals, particularly
medical students. The educational approach to medical humanities was defined by
Graham et al. (2016, p. 1334-1335) “as an activity that might improve empathy in
medical students by fostering skills such as the interpretation of narratives and the ability
to manage situations where there is no single correct answer.” Use of fictional literature
is perhaps the most common way of including arts and humanities in higher education,
but as Ousager and Johannessen (2010) noted, few studies have investigated the
assumption that fictional literature improves medical students’ and practitioners’ clinical
skills.
Yet, some compelling examples exist. Peters, Greenberger-Rosovsky, Crowder,
Block and Moore (2000) found that almost ten years after graduation from Harvard
Medical School, physicians who had been educated in humanistic-oriented medicine felt
more prepared to handle patients’ psychosocial difficulties than did physicians who had
engaged in traditional medical education. Moreover, while it is known that empathy
tends to decrease during medical education, studies have shown that empathy among
medical students who engaged in a medical humanities course did not decrease as much
as it did among students in traditional medical education, and the engagement with
humanities improved capacity for communication and cooperation (e.g., Arntfield,
Slesar, Dickson, & Charon, 2013; Graham et al. 2016; Mangione et al., 2018). Fictional
literature can also support theoretical understanding, and Voss (2012) argued that well-
chosen fictional descriptions of diseases could supplement scientific literature and
clinical training to increase our understanding of neurological disorders.
2
Fiction in psychology education
The capabilities that can be augmented through reading fiction, according to the cited
literature, are also relevant to clinical psychology education. Here, Moghaddam (2004)
argued for the use of fiction in psychology education (see also Mills, 2006). It can also
be argued that fiction may be even more important in psychology education than in
medical education: lacking the physiological measures central to medicine, psychologists
encounter clients in complex situations with ambiguous information and a need for
interpretation, making the ability to understand concepts and relate complex
descriptions of reality to theoretical models central to the clinical psychologist’s
education (e.g., Erikson & Erlandson, 2015). However, there are few studies of the
integration of fictional literature into clinical psychology education. An exception is
Janit, Hammock, and Richardson (2011), who found that students in a course on
abnormal psychology increased their understanding of the subject by reading fictional
narratives as case studies, to which they applied the theories and concepts they were
learning. Deering (2018) found similar benefits associated with the use of fictional
literature when teaching crisis intervention (see also Pérez et al., 2018). The influence
of literary quality on readers’ personal development has been studied within experimental
psychology. It has been shown that content alone does not explain the influence that has
been observed, and that the literary quality of the text is important (Djikic, Oatley,
Zoeterman & Peterson, 2009; Mar, Oatley, Hirsh, dela Paz, & Peterson, 2006).
However, the question of literary quality goes beyond the scope of this study. One
benefit of fictional literature is that traditional case studies are written with the aim to
illustrate some particular points from a particular theoretical angle, whereas a fictional
text usually is less focused, thus, requiring students to assume responsibility for
identifying the theoretically relevant aspects (e.g., Michaelson, 2016).
This difference between fiction and traditional case studies concerns a general
feature of clinical psychology education: the clinical psychologist is constantly
confronted with situations where there are no clear answers or where patients’ narratives
are incoherent or infused with strong emotional reactions, which are more often than
not the reason the patient is seeing the psychologist. Fictional literature often offers
existential dilemmas without solutions: dilemmas that also characterize clinical
psychological practice in which there are seldom clear or perfect solutions, and the
professional task is to find a solution that is individually framed and good enough (e.g.,
Hammarström, 2016; Punzi & Hagen, 2017; Topor, Böe, & Larsen, 2018).
3
Therefore, findings suggesting that fictional literature can help students to
increase their capacity to handle complex information and reach holistic understanding,
as reviewed by Marsh et al. (2012), have direct bearing on clinical psychology education.
Particularly relevant to psychology education is Rolfe's (2002) claim that fictional
literature is a potential device when teaching future health professionals to understand
their clients on an affective level.
This is also in line with a current trend in clinical practice and research where
there is a prominent focus on emotional reactions and regulation in assessment and
treatment interventions representing various theoretical perspectives (e.g., Berking et al.,
2018; Mathiesen et al., 2015; Mlotek & Paivio, 2017). It is important to note that
fictional characters are not restricted to the role of 'patients', but might also become
positive role models for students, as shown by Hoggan and Cranton (2014). Many of
the capabilities supported by reading fiction are related to what is usually discussed in
terms of critical thinking, such as the ability to proceed with caution when conclusions
must be drawn from complex and conflicting information.
Accordingly, Peters et al. (2000) argued that reading fiction could support
students’ development of critical thinking (see also Hoggan & Cranton, 2014). Whereas
critical thinking is one of the more enigmatic concepts in higher education, it is hardly
controversial to want students to develop critical thinking abilities in line with what
Ennis (1993, p. 180 described as "reasonable reflective thinking focused on deciding
what to believe or do" in relation to their professional capabilities. Here, critical thinking
is also a matter of understanding and accepting the uncertainty of knowledge claims, a
vital aspect of higher education going back to the early 19th century and the educational
ideals of Wilhelm von Humboldt (e.g., von Humboldt, 1970). A way of framing the
benefits of reading fiction is the possibility of confronting the unexpected and
challenging features of human life under educational conditions where they can be
discussed and placed in a context.
Molding characters and representation
Creating successful works of fiction involves extensive writing and revision of drafts
(Kaufman & Kaufman, 2009; Kellogg, 2006; Oatley & Djikic, 2008). Given the central
role of characters in fiction (Gardner, 1964; Rosenblatt, 1976), this involves drafting
and redrafting characters to practice character creation. Consistent with this, it is found
4
that the habit of writing fiction predicted how interesting and complex character sketches
were found to be by raters. There is no similar association for the habit of writing
nonfiction, perhaps because this does not generally involve creating characters. The link
between fiction writing and character ratings was partly explained by the length of the
sketches.
People who enjoy writing fiction and write frequently may have been more
motivated to develop fuller characters, with more details, in longer sketches that were
then rated as more interesting and complex. Participants who reported writing poetry
also tended to create characters who were more interesting, even after fiction-writing
habits were controlled for. The length of character sketches did not, however, account
for this relationship. Like fiction writing, poetry writing may enable people to practice
creating character attributes because poetry sometimes involves distinct poetic voices
(Eliot, 1953). In poetry, physical characteristics, intentions, and actions in a plot may
not feature as prominently as they do in fiction, but poetic voices can be represented,
subtly, by manner of speech. Alternatively, writing poetry may involve exploring and
expressing complex emotions, which may help people write of characters with complex
emotional lives.
Reading habits and creating characters
Whereas habits of writing fiction were associated with more engaging character sketches,
habits of reading fiction were not. In hindsight, it makes sense that simply consuming
fiction without an eye toward character would not be a strong predictor of sketching a
character who is engaging. Listening to music, for example, does not transform us into
musicians. Rather than quantity, the quality of fiction that people choose to read may
be important. Kidd and Castano (2013; 2016) found that reading literary fiction that
was based on complex characters improved people’s understanding of others, whereas
reading popular fiction did not (cf. Fong, Mullin, & Mar, 2013). Literary works invite
people to engage with texts in a way that is “writerly” (Barthes, 1975).
The implication is that readers who enter a writerly mode of thought write their
own versions of the stories they read. The writerly mode requires active problem solving
and is encouraged by expertise (Ericsson & Lehmann, 1999) so that writerly readers
become more skilled over time and better able to write fiction, including the character
sketches for this study. By contrast, the reading of popular fiction may be more likely to
5
occur in a “readerly” mode, which involves passive absorption. Barthes (1975) called
this “a kind of idleness,” so this mode would have no implied effects on the ability to
write well. In line with the idea that reading in a writerly way may help character creation,
participants who reported reading more poetry were more likely to create characters who
were interesting and complex. It is also observed that the personality trait of Openness
partially mediated the relationship between poetry reading and creation of engaging
characters. Seeking out a diverse range of experience, which may include exploring
complex emotions, may be a characteristic of readers of poetry who are high in Openness.
When a reader who is an expert trained in literary criticism reads a challenging poem,
she or he is able to draw on understandings of the poetry’s structures as well as means
used in interpretation. The result is a better understanding of the poem than is available
to novices (Peskin, 1998). Future work on character creation may therefore need to
measure the reading of literary and popular fiction separately, with the idea that readers
experienced in creating meaning in literary texts (prose and poetry) may be more likely
to create compelling characters. A second implication is that engaging with works of
literary fiction (both prose and poetry) may improve understanding of character and that
writerly reading may itself be a form of writing and may have some of the same kinds of
effects as the habit of writing frequently.
Personal construct theory
According to personal construct psychology, developed by the American psychologist
and personality theorist George Alexander Kelly (1905–1967), individuals create
personal constructs to organize ongoing experience and anticipate future events. A
personal construct is a bipolar mental template, consisting of something and its perceived
opposite. For example, one person might develop the personal construct dimension of
“safety versus adventure,” in which safety is seen as objectionable and boring. Another
person might develop a personal construct of “safety versus terror,” in which safety is
desirable and soothing. Clearly, these two people mean different things when they report
feeling safe. Personal construct psychology contends that in order to organize experience
coherently and understandably, each person develops a set of unique personal constructs.
One’s personal construct system is structured hierarchically, with some
constructs more central and influential to how the world is understood than others.
Accordingly, people often construe the same circumstances in vastly different ways. This
6
reflects personal construct theory’s notion of constructive alternativism, which holds that
there are an infinite number of personal constructs available. People often mistakenly
believe their manner of construing things is the only correct way, when all situations can
be construed in countless ways. Kelly most fully developed personal construct
psychology in a two-volume work, The Psychology of Personal Constructs.
Originally published in 1955, the volumes present personal construct
psychology in a formal manner intended to be least offensive to the professional
sensibilities of 1950s psychology. Kelly presented his theory as a fundamental postulate
and eleven corollaries. The fundamental postulate states that people organize their
psychological experience in ways that help them most effectively anticipate events. Kelly
stressed viability over validity in personal construct psychology. Because people only
access the world indirectly through their personal constructs, they can never be certain
that their constructs match reality; the validity of constructs can never be fully
established. However, people can know whether their constructs work adequately and
help them to successfully navigate life. Thus, the viability of constructs takes center stage
in personal construct psychology.
Self-characterization as narrative tool
Kelly encouraged therapists to read self-characterizations carefully. He believed that
clients’ “hottest” issues (“personal themes”) are revealed in the text. As the presentation
of cases will show, this point of Kelly’s is a useful one. People do choose to refer to
topics that they feel are the hottest at the time they engage in writing. The “safety” of
using the third person helps them touch upon emotion ally loaded issues that they would
have left untouched for a long time in ordinary therapy talk. One wonders why the tool
of self-characterization has had little appeal even top practitioners who were advocates
of the personal construct theory (see Fransella, 1995). Perhaps within the “modernist”
tradition, therapists were searching in vain for detailed instructions on how to work on
the texts produced. However, as far as guidelines to analysis were concerned, Kelly only
proposed concentrating on opening and closing phrases and paragraphs. In his view,
opening phrases indicate how persons see themselves at the present time, whereas closing
phrases indicate where they see themselves as going in the future. Fransella (see Fransella
& Dalton, 1990) complemented Kelly’s general guidelines by specifying some rules of
thumb for exploring “personal themes.” These were: (a) noticing omissions (for example,
7
the symptom); (b) attending to topics that show how clients think they differ from
others; and (c) monitoring ideas that seem to have structure versus those that appear
unstructured.
Although these suggestions sound interesting, in the personal construct
therapist’s analysis of the text, the main concern appears to be the “stripping” of the
narrative in order to discover the mental constructs that constitute the “essence.” But
going beyond the search for constructs, one can see that what is said between the
beginning and closing phrases is at least as intriguing. So is the sequence of events and
ideas, the grammar, the repetition of words, and so on. Perhaps Kelly’s principle “if you
do not know what is wrong with someone, ask them, they may tell you” makes more
sense to practitioners today than it did then.
Vogel (1994) suggested that “new meanings and new possibilities open up when
we look beyond the ways in which individuals classify, represent, and construct
individual people and to the stories in which these people and things are embedded” (p.
247).
Although the existing guidelines for analyzing self-characterizations appear
somewhat disappointing to any therapist who takes an interest in the narrative as a whole,
the same does not hold true for the specific instructions for writing it. These instructions
trigger the creation of narratives that, when examined both as a whole and in their parts,
offer fascinating therapy material. In addition, the instructions seem to be also
“appropriate” from a narrative and constructionist perspective, since they encompass
elements found in the work of some postmodern theorists and practitioners. These
elements are the following:
1. The altered point of view method, which means encouraging the client to talk about
the self/the family from the perspective of a third person, especially a friend or relative
(see for example Freedman & Combs, 1996; Gergen & Kaye, 1992; Tomm, 1998), and
looking at the self/the family from various angles through time (for example, from the
present to the future). This latter is achieved by using the various versions of the original
instructions.
2. The use of the theatre metaphor (“play,” “principal character”), which in the narrative
and constructionist literature is found to conceptualize both the personal and the family
life, as well as the therapeutic sessions (see for example Bruner, 1990; MacCormack,
1997; Omer, 1993; Sarbin, 1986; Vogel, 1994; White & Epston, 1990). Fransella
8
(1995) explains that Kelly appreciated the theatre and its therapeutic impact on actors.
He was familiar with Moreno’s methods of psychodrama and self-presentation, which
had an influence on his own tools of self-characterization and fixed-role therapy (a
behavior “experiment” based on a scenario—the enactment sketch—that has certain
differences compared to the way the person describes the self in the present).
Applications in Therapy
The cases that follow were not chosen in order to provide any standard directions or
guidelines on how characterization sketches may be interpreted. They were chosen to
illustrate ways that such narratives can be read to help therapists recognize a
person’s/family’s language codes and narrative themes, which may be traced through
generations (see Papp & Imber-Black, 1996). The assumption supported in this article
is that such work is catalytic in helping people find their own “voice” (Penn & Frankfurt,
1994; see also McLeod, 1997). Bruner (1990) has suggested that the “parts” we play in
life have been more or less assigned to us before we were even born, and thus our stories
are constrained by the part we were given within a particular “plot” (see Byng-Hall,
1998). Parry (1991) points out that this occurs particularly in family stories (and of
course in other larger stories). The interconnectedness of family members’ stories cause
family members to feel betrayed when one member neglects or refuses to play the part
he or she had “agreed” to play. The result may be a family crisis, which is resolved when
the “naughty” family member returns to the appointed role or when his or her
“pathology” becomes part of the family story. The cases presented below show that,
when family stories become constraining, family members are forced to fit into very tight
“costumes” that often belong/belonged to other family members of previous
generations. Thus, family members are required to accept the descriptions of the
experiences of others as their own, or “tell a story in other voices” (Parry, 1991), so that
they can be “just like” someone else. They also have to maintain “warded off areas of
feeling” (McLeod, 1997), so that they can “forget” how uncomfortable their tight
costume feels. When people are helped to find their voice, they can take charge of their
own story. As Parry (1991) clarifies, finding one’s voice does not mean acting as some
kind of “unitary personality.” It only means having an “authorial
voice” that decides how to act, or which character to be (and what costume to wear) in
a particular context (see also Parry and Doan, 1994).
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