This paper undertakes a critical appraisal of the prospects for fictionalist inquiry in psychology, which runs contrary to the traditional dissociation between fiction and knowledge-laden discourse. Following a review of the contested boundary between fiction and nonfiction, a portrait of essential aspects of fiction emerges, which includes authorial warrant, imaginative prescription, and performative engagement. The paper then proceeds to outline fictionalism as a philosophical approach, with reference to early and more modern variants of the position. This leads to a little discussed epistemic position called the fictional stance, which is then developed and applied to various psychological domains including the psychology of fiction, the fictional constructions of psychology, and the narrative study of lives. The viewpoint that emerges sees the epistemic value of fictional thinking in the unique access it provides to intuitive powers of the psychological imagination and to non-conceptual understandings of psychological life.

Introduction

“Hi, I’m Jerry Seinfeld. I’m fiction.” “I know.” “How did you know?” “Because I’m nonfiction.” (Seinfeld, 1993, p. 1) The frequent intermingling of fiction with nonfiction is a pervasive feature of contemporary culture. The fictional character named Jerry Seinfeld from the well known syndicated television series, for example, was portrayed by a real life comedian of the same name who shares many, though not all, of the fictional Jerry’s characteristics. This kind of mixing and merging of the fictional and the nonfictional in the public space of popular media is now so common as to be taken thoroughly for granted. Yet, epistemically, fiction and nonfiction are kept quite separate, with knowledge claims attaching almost exclusively to the latter. Notice that, in the opening quote, it is the nonfictional rather than the fictional Jerry who was said to “know.” Against the background of this sort of epistemic privileging of the nonfictional, common to both academic and popular discourse, the idea of fiction as an epistemic1 mode might seem peculiar, if not unintelligible. Given that fiction characteristically concerns itself with imaginary worlds, any attempt to engage with fiction is likely to strike the critical reader as a kind of escape from reality rather than as a serious attempt at knowledge. Psychological interest in the epistemic potential of fiction is nonetheless clearly evident in the work of some contemporary psychologists who have recently turned to fiction writing as an avocation (Winerman, 2014). This work has occasioned some surprising and unexpected insights. Irvin Yalom’s acclaimed historical novel, When Nietzsche Wept, for example, was based on an imagined scenario in which the German philosopher received psychological treatment at the hands of Viennese physician Joseph Breuer. Just over a decade following the initial publication of the novel, historical documentation came to light detailing arrangements that had actually been made for Nietzsche’s treatment by Breuer that, given the circumstances, were never carried through. In an afterward to a new edition of the novel, Yalom (2003) remarked: “In other words, the very fictional event which I had imagined and used as the foundation to my novel came close to having been history” (p. 303). Yalom (2000) elsewhere reflected on other psychological benefits of fiction writing beyond historical insight, including opportunities for working through personal issues, for contemplating “what if” scenarios, and for increased psychological understanding more generally. Shira Nayman, one of the psychological fiction writers interviewed by Winerman (2014), noted: “Being a writer and a psychologist comes from the same place d I’m interested in the human experience” (p. 71). This confluence of the fictional and the psychological is, however, nothing new. Historically, interest in fiction as a means of psychological inquiry goes back to the pioneering psychodynamic theorizing of Freud, Jung and Adler. Freud and Jung, in particular, regularly mined works of mythological fiction for psychological meaning, with Freud focusing on the Oedipal myth as told by Sophocles and Jung on mythological tales of transformation and rebirth (Smythe, 2014a). Yet, the notion of fiction, itself, is rarely subjected to critical scrutiny. Jung’s only reference to the notion in his Collected Works, for example, is brief and noncommittal: “Call it a fiction if you like,” he wrote, but fantasy and imagination are far more effective agents of psychological healing than physical or chemical treatments. He went on to critique the theories of Freud and Adler for neglecting this aspect of the psychological in favor of a one-sided and exclusive focus on instincts (Jung, 1932/1969, par. 494). Nonetheless, it was Adler who developed the notion of fiction explicitly as a psychological concept (Smythe, 2005). In particular, Adler’s notion of fictional finalism pointed to the role of guiding fictions and fictional goals in the explanation of human functioning, such that: “Everything grows ‘as if’ it were striving to overcome all imperfections and achieve perfection” (Adler, 1932/1965, p. 86).