A Fresh Take on Psychological Fiction
When I started writing All I Know, I did not intend to focus on psychology. I set out to write a love story that was complicated and real. I suppose I wanted to write something entertaining, but mostly I wanted to write something that would resonate with people and take them on an emotional journey.
(How to Write Psychologically Realistic Characters in Fantasy.)
The novel naturally and organically ended up including mental health issues because as a psychotherapist, my days are filled with experiences of trauma, grief, depression, anxiety and relationship challenges, so these topics are always bubbling around inside my mind. I’m also constantly impressed and inspired by people’s strength and resilience in overcoming adversity, so those themes were swirling around in there too. As my novel evolved, part of what started to matter to me was providing a window into some of the hardships so many people I know have lived with, creating a compelling story that might also be educational.
According to the National Alliance on Mental Health (NAMI), one in five adults in the US experience mental illness every year. One in six youth, ages 6-17, experience mental illness each year, with suicide being the second leading cause of death for people aged 10-14. More than one third of those experiencing mental illness also experience a substance use disorder. That’s over 60 million people impacted directly by mental illness, not including their family members and friends who are also affected. Those numbers are staggering and show that this is an important topic to learn about.
Stories exist as ways for us to learn about the world around us. Lisa Cron talks about this in her book Story Genius. “Stories let us vicariously try out difficult situations we haven’t yet experienced to see what it would really feel like, and what we’d need to learn in order to survive.” It’s why every society there has ever been has had stories. We couldn’t survive without stories because we learn through them.
For example, I love historical fiction, even though I never particularly liked history class in school. History felt dry, too much about dates and facts and not enough about lived experiences. However, reading a book about a far-off time and place and people captivates me, pulling me into the natural learning that simultaneously occurs.
In terms of creating characters with mental health struggles, it’s about cultivating empathy and growing understanding of what others are going through, destigmatizing and easing judgment. Additionally, when individuals struggling with depression or trauma or addiction see themselves represented in honest ways, through complex and relatable characters, the hope is that they feel less alone. As Isak Dinesen says, “All sorrows can be borne if we put them in a story or tell a story about them.”
James Baldwin put it this way, “You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, who had ever been alive.”
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I’m starting to think of my book as psychological fiction, teaching about these issues in much the same way as historical fiction teaches us about history. Research is vital in crafting a reliable work of historical fiction, and likewise, it is important to have a strong knowledge base to tell mental health stories well. That can come from personal experience or research. My expertise comes from having a master’s degree in Counseling Psychology and working as a therapist for many years with several hundred clients.
It is easy to create a caricature of someone with a mental health challenge, and that has certainly been done time and time again, often through the well-established genre of psychological thrillers and in the form of a terrifyingly insane villain. However, that only serves to perpetuate stereotypes, creating misunderstanding and otherness. What I’m thinking about in this reimagined classification of psychological fiction is to expand the reader’s perspective about what it might be like to live with a mental or emotional challenge or to live with someone struggling with that, all while telling an interesting story.
My idea for a clever new name certainly does not mean there haven’t been many brilliant books of this type. One of my favorites is I Know This Much is True, by Wally Lamb, painting a picture of what a life with schizophrenia might look like, how it effects both the person with the disorder and the people who love and try to care for that person. Celeste Ng’s Everything I Never Told You is a heartbreaking portrait of depression and suicide and how devastating that can be for all involved. The Last Confession of Sylvia P., by Lee Kravetz, is another tragically beautiful depiction of depression. Mary Beth Keane’s Ask Again, Yes portrays addiction and codependent family patterns and how they carry forward generationally. More recently, Barbara Kingsolver’s Demon Copperhead illustrates similar themes.
I have tried to emulate the approach of these wonderful writers, and I hope my novel is a respectable addition to this self-proclaimed genre of psychological fiction, that it authentically shows what it might be like to grow up in a family that struggles with addiction, abuse, trauma, and grief, and how growing up that way impacts adult romantic relationships, how unhealed wounds and unmet needs from childhood directly influence the partners we choose and the way those relationships unfold.
My goal as a writer is to create an emotional experience for readers of my novel, and I suppose to entertain them, but that does not need to happen apart from educating. In fact, I think they are indelibly intertwined. Good stories entertain us and reveal something about the world, about relationships, about how people think and behave. I hope All I Know does that.
Check out Holly C. LaBarbera’s All I Know here:
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