Deconstructing the Psychological Complexity of Novel Characters from an Evidence-Based Perspective and Its Implications for Mental Health
Wen XingAbstract
Objective
Most traditional literary analyses rely on subjective speculation, ignoring the internal psychological pressure and fluctuating mental states of novel characters, leading to superficial interpretation of character psychology and insufficient exploration of implicit mental health dilemmas hidden behind character behaviors. This paper adopts evidence-based research methods to analyze the dual correlation between novel characters’ images and psychological complexity, excavate their inner psychological pressure and abnormal mental states, and deepen the objective interpretation of characters’ implicit mental health conditions.
Subjects and Methods
This study selects typical classic and contemporary novel characters with conflicting personalities as research samples. It adopts text evidence coding, psychological scale matching and comparative psychological analysis. It extracts textual evidence reflecting characters’ inner psychological pressure, changing mental states and mental health crises, and quantifies the gradient characteristics of their multi-layered psychological complexity.
Results
The conflicting growth environments and life predicaments of novel characters bring long-term inner psychological pressure, resulting in split and unstable mental states. Their external behavioral contradictions are consistent with real sub-health mental health states. Evidence-based analysis can objectively restore the formation mechanism of characters’ psychological pressure and intuitively present the evolution track of their mental states.
Conclusions
Evidence-based research makes up for the defects of subjective literary criticism. It can accurately interpret the source of characters’ inner psychological pressure, sort out the evolution of their complex mental states, comprehensively analyze their implicit mental health problems, and provide a new objective research perspective for the in-depth psychological interpretation of literary novel characters.
Acknowledgement
1. Chongqing Municipal Education Science "14th Five-Year Plan" 2025 Annual Special Project for Education Reform: Evidence-Based Research on the Teaching of Character Complexity in Novels for the Chinese Language and Literature Major (Project No.: K25ZG2120162); 2.2025 University-Level Education Reform Project of Chongqing Three Gorges University: Evidence-Based Research on the Teaching of Character Complexity in Novels in the History of Modern Chinese Literature (Project No.: JGWK2509).
Corresponding Author
Wen Xing, Northwest Minzu University, Lanzhou 730030, Gansu, China; Chongqing Sanxia University of Science and Technology, Wanzhou 404020, Chongqing, China.