psychology case study on fictional character

Literary Character

• Child Development
• Developmental Psychology
• Social Interaction
• Social Psychology

Although many students would rather be watching TV or playing video games than working through classic tomes, science has documented how a steady dose of books can fuel their academic success, vocabulary, and reading comprehension.

But a number of studies suggest that books — and specifically literary fiction — can also affect social skills, emotional intelligence, and behavior throughout life. As Canadian novelist and psychological scientist Keith Oatley, an APS Fellow, has written, stories appear to offer a deeply felt simulation of social experience, expanding our understanding of ourselves and others.

Evidence suggests that these effects may germinate when children are first exposed to storybooks, but before they even learn to read — when they’re simply listening to stories from books. In a 2009 study, Israeli educational researchers Dorit D. Aram and Sigalit Aviram found that children of mothers who were knowledgeable about children’s fiction were more likely to be rated by teachers as empathic and emotionally well adjusted. And a 2010 study led in Canada by York University psychologist Raymond A. Mar, a prolific researcher on the link between narratives and social abilities, found that preschoolers whose parents were better at recognizing the titles and authors of children’s books scored better on measures of theory of mind — the complex skill of understanding other people’s mental states.

These studies, however, are based on inference. More recently, educational researchers have directly linked children’s reading and social development. A team led by Judith Lysaker of Purdue University conducted an experimental intervention with 22 second- and third-grade students who were exhibiting difficulties with both reading comprehension and social relationships. The children participated in a reading group that focused not only on understanding the text but also on exploring the thoughts, intentions, and emotions of the characters in the books. For example, the students were asked to write a letter from a particular character’s perspective.

As reported in 2011 in the journal Reading Psychology, assessments done before and after the reading intervention showed significant improvements in the participants’ reading comprehension and in their ability to imagine the emotions of others.

The Role of Genre

Research with adults suggests that such broadening in perspective isn’t evoked by just any novel or short story. In a study published last year in Science , psychologists David Comer Kidd and Emanuele Castano of the New School for Social Research found that reading literature improves intuitive abilities. But that effect appeared to apply only to what they describe as literary fiction — not the mysteries, thrillers, and other popular books that often sit atop bestseller lists.

Kidd and Castano performed five experiments to measure the effect of reading literary fiction on participants’ theory of mind (ToM). To choose texts for their study, Kidd and Castano relied on expert evaluations to define three types of writing: literary fiction, popular fiction, and nonfiction. They had each participant read excerpts from one of three genres:

• recent National Book Award finalists or winners of the 2012 PEN/O. Henry Prize for short fiction;
• popular fiction drawn from Amazon.com bestsellers or an anthology of recent popular fiction; or
• nonfiction works from the Smithsonian magazine.

Afterward, the researchers tested the participants’ ToM capabilities using several well-established measures. One of these measures is the “Reading the Mind in the Eyes” test, which asks participants to look at black-and-white photographs of actors’ eyes and indicate the emotion expressed.

Across the five experiments, Kidd and Castano found that participants who were assigned to read literary fiction performed significantly better on the ToM tests than did participants assigned to the other experimental groups. And the effect held after controlling for the readers’ age, gender, education, and mood.

The study suggests that not just any fiction helps foster ToM. Unlike popular fiction, literary fiction requires intellectual engagement and creative thought from its readers, Kidd and Castano assert.

“Features of the modern literary novel set it apart from most bestselling thrillers or romances,” they wrote. “Through the use of … stylistic devices, literary fiction defamiliarizes its readers. Just as in real life, the worlds of literary fiction are replete with complicated individuals whose inner lives are rarely easily discerned but warrant exploration.”

Neutralizing Bias

According to a study led by psychology researcher Dan Johnson, the exploration of fictional characters’ inner lives may even help counter certain racial, ethnic, and cultural biases. Johnson, an assistant professor of psychology at Washington and Lee University, assigned a subset of 68 study participants to read an excerpt from the 2009 novel Saffron Dreams by Shaila Abdullah. The story’s protagonist, a counter-stereotypical Muslim woman, is attacked by a group of male teenagers who spew racial and ethnic slurs at her. The other participants simply read a synopsis of the excerpt, devoid of descriptive prose and dialogue.

Next, the researchers showed the participants a series of pictures of ambiguous-race faces and asked them to rate them as either Arab, Caucasian, mixed but mostly Arab, or mixed but mostly Caucasian.

The participants who read the actual excerpt were more likely than the synopsis readers to categorize people as mixed race, rather than identifying them as either Arab or Caucasian. In essence, racial categories became less salient for them after they read Abdullah’s story.

In a second experiment, Johnson and his colleagues recruited 110 students online and had them read either the excerpt of the novel, a brief synopsis, or a separate piece about the history of the automobile. Afterwards, the participants viewed 12 images of the ambiguous-race faces expressing varying levels of anger. Again, the students were asked to assign each face to one of the same four categories used in the earlier study. Participants who read the synopsis or the history piece tended to categorize the most intensely angry faces as Arab. But those who read Abdullah’s narrative showed no such bias.

This led Johnson and his team to conclude that artfully written, evocative fiction helps people identify with characters from different cultures — and thus disrupts readers’ tendency to stereotype and judge.

This doesn’t mean that a good page-turner is devoid of psychological effects. Scientists at Emory University have found that reading a compelling novel may cause changes in the brain that reflect readers’ immersion in the story. Led by neuroscientist Gregory S. Berns, the researchers had 21 college students read Pompeii, a piece of historical fiction written by Robert Harris and published in 2003. The book, which revolves around a young man’s efforts to save the woman he loves as Mount Vesuvius erupts in ancient Italy, was selected specifically because of its dramatic plot.

For 5 days, the participants underwent daily functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scans while at rest. Over the next 9 days, the students read portions of the book until they finished, undergoing additional fMRI scans every morning. Their brains also were scanned for 5 days after they finished the book.

In looking at the scan results, Berns and his colleagues detected heightened activity in regions of the brain associated with physical sensation and movement. Those types of changes suggested that reading fiction — any fiction — mentally transports us into the body of the protagonist.

What’s more, the neurological changes continued for 5 days after participants finished reading, revealing that the effect wasn’t fleeting, the researchers said.

Chekhov-Induced Change 

Another study indicates that the story itself may be less important than its mere status as fictional or nonfictional. Researchers Maja Djikic, Sara Zoeterman, Jordan Peterson, and Oatley gave 166 people a battery of questionnaires that included standard personality measures and questions about their current emotional states. They were then randomly assigned to one of two conditions. Those in the “art” condition read “The Lady With the Dog,” a classic short story by Anton Chekhov about an adulterous affair between a Russian banker and a woman he meets while vacationing in Yalta.

Participants in the control condition read the same tale, only rewritten to appear as a nonfictional report of proposed divorce proceedings. The researchers made every effort to make sure the plot remained almost identical. The control text had the same length, content, and complexity as Chekhov’s original, and readers found it just as interesting.

After reading the stories, all the participants were given another round of questionnaires, including the same personality and emotional measures they took at the beginning of the experiment.

The researchers found that the people assigned to the “art” condition showed more changes in personality traits compared with those who read the nonfiction version of the story. What’s more, each person’s change was unique, affected by the emotions he or she was feeling while reading.

“While it might seem surprising, this study demonstrates the turn-of-the-century prose by Chekhov can make university undergraduates experience and report themselves as more different than those who read a documentary-style text with the same content,” the research team wrote in a chapter of the book Directions in Empirical Literary Studies (2008). “By projecting ourselves into fictional stories and the minds of fictional characters, we open ourselves up to greater possibilities for who we may become.”

But how robust are these effects on children and adolescents? Does reading fiction affect them the same way that novels appear to influence adults?

In a 2008 article in Perspectives on Psychological Science , Mar and Oatley acknowledge that children may have difficulty comprehending subtext and metaphor, but point to research showing that they can still hone some of their social reasoning skills by reading storybooks. Nevertheless, the researchers agree that empirical links between story reading and social development are spotty and should be studied in more depth.

Recent research has, however, signaled that certain forms of fiction can engage even the most excitable, distractible children. Take youngsters who show a high tendency toward sensation seeking, a personality trait that APS Fellow Marvin Zuckerman identified to describe people who possess a heightened need for stimulation. High sensation seekers (HSS) are drawn to novel, emotionally complex experiences, which can sometimes lead to deviant behaviors like drug use and aggression. In a 2011 study involving fourth- and fifth-grade students, Purdue University researchers found that HSS children overall were less apt to enjoy the passive act of leisure reading. But if those students read more exciting or suspenseful narratives, they were just as likely to enjoy reading as their low-sensation-seeking peers.

At first glance, the fantasy novels and outer-space thrillers that are thought to better engage sensation seekers might be regarded as lacking in depth. It’s assumed that students get far more poignancy out of To Kill a Mockingbird than Divergent .

But in their 2008 article, Mar and Oatley argue that even books populated by wizards, dragons, vampires, and aliens can strive to depict important aspects of the human experience.

“A science-fiction novel that takes place on a distant space station,” they wrote, “may have greater psychological realism than does a pulpy novel set in modern times in a familiar locale.” œ

References and Further Reading

Aram, D. & Aviram, S. (2009). Mothers’ storybook reading and kindergartners’ socioemotional and literacy development. Reading Psychology, 30 ( 2), 175–194. doi: 10.1080/02702710802275348.

Bal, P. M. & Veltkamp, M. (2013). How does fiction reading influence empathy? An experimental iInvestigation on the role of emotional transportation. PLoS ONE 8 (1): e55341. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0055341.

Berns, G. S., Blaine, K., Prietula, M. J. & Pye, B. E. (2013). Short- and long-term effects of a novel on connectivity in the brain. Brain Connectivity, 3 (6): 590–600. doi:10.1089/brain.2013.0166.

Djikic, M., Oatley, K., Zoeterman, S. & Peterson, J. B. (2009). On being moved by art: How reading fiction transforms the self. Creativity Research Journal, 21 (1), 24–29. doi: 10.1080/10400410802633392

Jensen, J., Imboden, K., Ivic, R. (2011). Sensation seeking and narrative transportation: High sensation seeking children’s interest in reading outside school. Scientific Studies of Reading, 15 (6), 541–558.  doi: 10.1080/10888438.2010.528819

Johnson, D. R., Huffman, B. L., Jasper, D. M. (2014). Changing race boundary perception by reading narrative fiction. Basic and Applied Social Psychology, 36 (1), 83–90.

Kidd, D. C., Castano, E. (2013). Reading literary fiction improves theory of mind. Science, 342 (6156), 377–380. doi: 10.1126/science.1239918

Lysaker, J. T., Tonge, C., Gauson, D., Miller, A. (2011). Reading and social imagination: What relationally oriented reading instruction can do for children. Reading Psychology, 32( 6), 520–566.

Mar, R. A., Oatley, K. (2008). The function of fiction is the abstraction and simulation of social experience. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 3 (3), 173–192.

Mar, R. A., Tackett, J., Moore, C. (2009). Exposure to media and theory-of-mind development in preschoolers. Cognitive Development, 25 , 69 – 78. doi:10.1016/j.cogdev.2009.11.002.

Speer, N. K., Reynolds, J. R., Swallow, K. M., Zacks, J. M. (2009). Reading stories activates neural representations of visual and motor experiences. Psychological Science, 20 (8), 989–999. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9280.2009.02397.x

I found this article both interesting and useful as it points out how fiction can be just as useful to the learning process as fact. I remembered some earlier experiences in my life where I learned something from fiction.

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About the Author

Scott Sleek is Director of News & Information at APS. He can be contacted at [email protected] .

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The role of fictional characters in psychological exploration, personal experiences, emotional responses

2019, Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience

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 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 illnesspsychopathy, narcissism, antisocial personality, paranoia, bipolar disorder, and schizophrenia, among many other conditions. The aim of this commentary is to explore the usage of literature in stories and films, 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.

Related Papers

Japanese Psychological Research

Elly A Konijn

Transstellar Journals

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Therapeutic Literary Novels: A Step Back from Mental Agony Psychological fiction offers a unique kind of therapy to its readers. Proposed paper intends to reflect upon few exemplary characters from English literature around the world. This particular genre of writing tries to delve into circumstances that force characters to behave in an abnormal manner. Internal observation is stressed upon in order to understand the character; motivation behind actions is more important than the actions of psychological characters. Society, at large, talks about taking care of sick. In reality, mentally disturbed people are considered to be outcasts. Enough time is not given by family and friends to get normalcy back into the life of such people. Literature is valued for bringing out all that troubles man in a lighter tone through stream of consciousness writing style, interior dialogues and monologues and other literary devices. Troubled youth of present age easily identifies with these characters. Catharsis helps to cleanse minds of troubled readers. When a reader identifies himself with certain traits found in characters from these stories, it gives him a sense of being part of their world; his sense of alienation is replaced by feelings that make him want to reach out to the character to console and to be consoled. Reader finds a purpose to his meaningless existence. Readers having to deal with the sick in their lives also learn to live a better life through all that touches upon the lives of characters, who have a mental case amidst them.

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Garry Hagberg

International Journal of Educational Methodology

Fictional characters give literary works a sense of reality. The actions of fictional characters play a crucial role in children's personality development. Young readers who lack critical reading skills are more likely to incorporate fictional characters into their lives because they have a hard time telling reality from fiction. Therefore, we should determine how children perceive fictional characters and teach them that they are imaginary figures. In this way, we can help them approach those characters' actions from an external and critical perspective. This study adopted a qualitative research design (case study) to investigate secondary school students' perceptions of fictional characters. The sample consisted of 45 secondary school students (28 female and 17 male). Data were collected through interviews and document review techniques. Data were analyzed using content analysis. Results showed that participants were more likely to be interested in and identify with ch...

Anne Gre Wabeke

New Literary History

Paisley Livingston

Cynthia Vinney , Karen E . Dill-Shackleford , Kristin Hopper-Losenicky

This essay provides an overview of research and theory on narrative and its important, functional role in human experience, including the ways people use media to interrogate their own beliefs and feelings, and derive social meaning. Thought‐provoking film, television, and books can help us make meaning of our lives and grow in ways that are important for our successful social functioning. Research reviewed here demonstrates that exposure to fiction can increase empathy and social skills and reduce prejudice. Our connection to characters and stories has been studied in various ways as extensions of the self into another, while at the same time bringing the other into the self. Bringing together disparate perspectives, we propose that connecting to story worlds involves a process of " dual empathy " —simultaneously engaging in intense personal processing while also " feeling through " characters, both of which produce benefits. Because the value of entertainment narratives may not always be well understood, we explain how those experiences can be personal, social, and can serve important adaptive functions.

NATALIA IRRAZABAL

Youth Voice Journal

Toula Gordillo

Carl Jung’s (1947) ‘collective unconscious’ and Joseph Campbell’s (1963) ‘mythographic discoveries’ examined the role of myth in our everyday lives. Additionally, Dr. Viktor Frankl (1984) identified that the ability to make meaning out of suffering can assist a person, including young adults, with mental health concerns. In this discussion paper it is argued that myth-based fantasy stories that describe the legendary ‘hero’s quest’ can play an important role in helping a young person to comprehend mental health suffering. Through the literary trope of Young Adult (YA) fantasy fiction, mythical fantasy stories can aid in understanding during a process of inner reflection and cognitive reframing. As part of an emerging methodology entitled Story Image Therapy (SIT)®, narratives such as the katabatic tale of the hero’s sojourn journey (to the ‘underworld’ and return) provide a viable method for a young person to make meaning out of mental health distress. The proposed method can also be used to deliver mental health information and strategies in a way that is fun, ever-expanding and open to individual, cultural and other interpretations. Evidence to support the YA fiction method includes archetypal literary criticism and bibliotherapy models, as well as the youth’s ‘literary voices’ revealed through the popular mythical YA fantasy fictions: Tolkien’s (1954-1955) The Lord of the Rings trilogy, Lewis’ (1950-1956) Narnia Chronicles, Rowling’s Harry Potter series (1997-2007) and Pullman’s (1995-2000) His Dark Materials trilogy.

Tom Cochrane

I defend the claim that fictional narratives provide cognitive benefits to readers in virtue of helping them to understand character. Fictions allow readers to rehearse the skill of selecting and organizing into narratives those episodes of a life that reflect traits or values. Two further benefits follow; i) fictional narratives provide character models that we can apply to real-life individuals (including ourselves) and ii) fictional narratives help readers to reflect on the value priorities that constitute character. I defend the plausibility of these cognitive benefits against certain worries raised by Gregory Currie and Peter Goldie.

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Writing Psychologically-Realistic Characters in Fiction

A psychiatrist-novelist reveals her writing methods..

Updated May 22, 2024 | Reviewed by Jessica Schrader

• As readers, we usually want fictional characters to be both unique and psychologically realistic.
• Psychiatrist-novelists have a well of clinical experience teaching them how people feel, behave, and grow.
• Writing techniques that help create psychologically-realistic characters are illustrated.
• .Novelists have sometimes-unconscious reasons for choosing certain themes and characters to write about.

Good novelists create characters who are complex. unique, and have relatable human needs and feelings. Joyce Carol Oates is one of our best contemporary novelists, and has created a host of memorable characters. including a hippie, an imagined Marilyn Monroe, and a teenage boy. When she and I met and exchanged novels, she said: “You’re a psychiatrist and a novelist. What a great combination!”

There certainly are superb novelists who are also psychiatrists. Dr. Daniel Mason, for example, is both an inpatient psychiatrist and one of our finest contemporary writers of fiction. However, non- psychiatric physicians have also written psychologically rich characters. Dr. Abraham Verghese, for example, specializes in internal medicine. And many of the greatest novelists of all time who created complex characters: Dickens, Tolstoy, and Dostoevsky were neither psychiatrists nor physicians.

So how, then, are psychiatrist novelists “a great combination"?

The advantages of being a psychiatrist-novelist

Humans are fascinated by other people and their behaviors. From earliest childhood , we listen to and read stories to show how people face challenging situations. We psychiatrists have an added advantage. In our clinical work, we are privileged to hear the most private thoughts and feelings of many people: their fears, the different ways they have tried to protect themselves in difficult and often traumatizing relationships and situations. We also see how they change and grow. When creating fictional characters, we have access to this well of knowledge to write imaginary but psychologically realistic people.

The challenges

When it comes down to the writing, though, physicians have a disadvantage. We're trained to write clinical case histories in a rigid format: presenting problem, history of present illness, past medical history, family history, and so on. This is totally unlike the process fiction authors must master to write characters that come alive on the page. We physicians must put aside that ingrained pattern of straightforward reporting if we are to write good fiction.

One psychiatrist-novelist’s process of writing

Is our process of writing fiction different from that of other novelists? What follows is my own method. I tend to think it is not; readers here may hazard their own guess.

Finding a topic gripping to the novelist

A novelist will spend countless hours in his/her imagination , even more writing sentences, paragraphs, and chapters, then even more rewriting. Because of this heavy expenditure of energy and time, we must find a topic that fascinates us so much we are willing (or needing) to invest the months and years necessary to write about it.

In my case, the idea for my novel of psychological suspense, The End of Miracles , came directly from my clinical work as a psychiatrist. Over a period of a few months, I was asked to see three women, each with an extended false pregnancy , a condition technically named pseudocyesis.

In addition to my clinical interest in evaluating and treating them, and my scientific interest in studying their hormone levels, I also thought: wouldn’t it be fascinating to write a novel in which, at some point, the main character develops pseudocyesis?

Why was this topic so appealing? Only during the course of writing did the realization of the likely roots of my fascination become apparent.

Having an overarching goal

I'd long harbored a creative need to write a novel. I also wanted to add an engrossing book to the world of literature in return for the pleasure I’ve received from reading fiction since my childhood. As a psychiatrist, I set myself additional goals . I wanted to show psychiatrists as they really are, not as the devious or incompetent stereotypes so often portrayed in books or films. I wanted to show that people who develop a serious mental illness are not that different from the rest of us.

Creating the characters

One method I used was to become an actor. I'd pretend to be a particular character and then "listen to" their inner monologue and dialogue. Probably the easiest chapters to write were about the psychiatrist in the novel. I simply imagined myself in my own office, sitting across from the main character, Margo, and having a therapeutic session with her.

Writing the psychological roots of behaviors

It was very important to me to make Margo’s thoughts and actions grow out of her psychology. Once I'd written enough to know her feelings and behaviors in the present, I added to prior chapters instances of thoughts and experiences that were roots of the current ones.

In the process of writing this way, I discovered a possible clue as to why I was so attracted to the theme of a false pregnancy. A memory came to mind: 5-year-old me seeing my mother very pregnant, seeing babies in fancy carriages, seeing women nursing their babies. Likely I wanted a baby then, too—yet never got to have one. But these women who’d developed false pregnancies with distended abdomens had found a solution to that problem! Why hadn’t I thought of that? Well, now I had.

Writing suspensefully

I’ve read many thrillers, and now used the techniques I’d observed in them to create tension and a page-turning experience for my own readers. In the most suspenseful sections, I kept chapter lengths short and hinted in their last sentences that something crucial was about to happen,

Sending the book out into the world

Publication was a joy mixed with an unexpected momentary sense of loss. In a way, it resembled what it’s like when a baby is born: for many months, you’ve had a private, intimate relationship, and then it ends. Similarly, when my novel was published, there was a brief sadness about sending it out into the world to make new relationships with its readers.

The audiobook re-creation

When we read a book, we're not actually reading the same book as its other readers. We filter what we see on the page through our own experiences and understanding of the world. With an audiobook, the narrator voices the story and the characters through their own response to the text.

For The End of Miracle 's Audible audiobook, I listened to many of their narrators read aloud sections of other books and of my own before choosing the one whose voice resonated best with the story. I would be entrusting this person to be a kind of co-creator with me. It’s been gratifying to read comments of those who’ve both read and listened, writing they very much liked the print version and loved the audiobook. Then, I am reassured that I made the right choice.

The effect on one listener, though, was unexpected and humorous. My teenage grandson wrote on his Facebook page: “After reading the novel I listened to the audiobook and it was a relief to hear the phrase ‘egg showered in sperm’ in someone else’s voice instead of my grandmother’s.”

Starkman, M. (2016) The End of Miracles: A Novel, She Writes Press.

Monica Starkman, MD is a professor of psychiatry emerita at the University of Michigan. Her novel The End of Miracles is a suspenseful story about a woman who unravels psychologically after harrowing infertility and a tragic miscarriage, the shocking choices she makes, and the psychiatrists and close ones who try to save her.

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Topics for Psychology Case Studies

Ridofranz / Getty Images  

In one of your psychology classes, you might be asked to write a  case study  of an individual. What exactly is a case study? A case study is an in-depth psychological investigation of a single person or a group of people.

Case studies are commonly used in medicine and psychology. For example, these studies often focus on people with an illness (for example, one that is rare) or people with experiences that cannot be replicated in a lab.

Here are some ideas and inspiration to help you come up with a fascinating psychological case study.

What Should Your Case Study Be About?

Your instructor will give you directions and guidelines for your case study project. Make sure you have their permission to go ahead with your subject before you get started.

The format of your case study may vary depending on the class requirements and your instructor's expectations. Most psychological case studies include a detailed background of the person, a description of the problem the person is facing, a diagnosis, and a description of an intervention using one or more therapeutic approaches.

The first step in writing a case study is to select a subject. You might be allowed to conduct a case study on a volunteer or someone you know in real life, such as a friend or family member.

However, your instructor may prefer that you select a less personal subject, such as an individual from history, a famous literary figure, or even a fictional character.

Psychology Case Study Ideas

Want to find an interesting subject for your case study? Here are just a few ideas that might inspire you.

A Pioneering Psychologist

Famous or exceptional people can make great case study topics. There are plenty of fascinating figures in the history of psychology who would be interesting subjects for a case study.

Here are some of the most well-known thinkers in psychology whose interesting lives could make a great case study:

• Sigmund Freud
• Harry Harlow
• Mary Ainsworth
• Erik Erikson
• Ivan Pavlov
• Jean Piaget
• Abraham Maslow
• William James
• B. F. Skinner

Examining these individuals’ upbringings, experiences, and lives can provide insight into how they developed their theories and approached the study of psychology.

A Famous Patient in Psychology

The best-known people in psychology aren’t always professionals. The people that psychologists have worked with are among some of the most fascinating people in the history of psychology.

Here are a few examples of famous psychology patients who would make great case studies:

• Anna O.  (Bertha Pappenheim)
• Phineas Gage
• Genie (Susan Wiley)
• Kitty Genovese
• Little Albert
• David Reimer
• Chris Costner Sizemore (Eve White/Eve Black)
• Dora (Ida Bauer)
• Patient H.M. (Henry Molaison)

By taking a closer look at the lives of these psychology patients, you can gain greater insight into their experiences. You’ll also get to see how diagnosis and treatment were different in the past compared to today.

A Historical Figure

Historical figures—famous and infamous—can be excellent subjects for case studies. Here are just a few influential people from history that you might consider doing a case study on:

• Eleanor Roosevelt
• George Washington
• Abraham Lincoln
• Elizabeth I
• Margaret Thatcher
• Walt Disney
• Benjamin Franklin
• Charles Darwin
• Howard Hughes
• Catherine the Great
• Pablo Picasso
• Vincent van Gogh
• Edvard Munch
• Marilyn Monroe
• Andy Warhol
• Salvador Dali

You’ll need to do a lot of reading and research on your chosen subject's life to figure out why they became influential forces in history. When thinking about their psychology, you’ll also want to consider what life was like in the times that they lived.

A Fictional Character or a Literary Figure

Your instructor might allow you to take a more fun approach to a case study by doing a deep dive into the psychology of a fictional character.

Here are a few examples of fictional characters who could make great case studies:

• Macbeth/Lady Macbeth
• Romeo/Juliet
• Sherlock Holmes
• Norman Bates
• Elizabeth Bennet/Fitzwilliam Darcy
• Katniss Everdeen
• Harry Potter/Hermione Granger/Ron Weasley/Severus Snape
• Batman/The Joker
• Atticus Finch
• Mrs. Dalloway
• Dexter Morgan
• Hannibal Lecter/Clarice Starling
• Fox Mulder/Dana Scully
• Forrest Gump
• Patrick Bateman
• Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader
• Ellen Ripley
• Michael Corleone
• Randle McMurphy/Nurse Ratched
• Miss Havisham

The people who bring characters to life on the page can also be fascinating. Here are some literary figures who could be interesting case studies:

• Shakespeare
• Virginia Woolf
• Jane Austen
• Stephen King
• Emily Dickinson
• Sylvia Plath
• JRR Tolkien
• Louisa May Alcott
• Edgar Allan Poe
• Charles Dickens
• Ernest Hemingway
• F. Scott Fitzgerald
• George Orwell
• Maya Angelou
• Kurt Vonnegut
• Agatha Christie
• Toni Morrison
• Daphne du Maurier
• Franz Kafka
• Herman Melville

Can I Write About Someone I Know?

Your instructor may allow you to write your case study on a person that you know. However, you might need to get special permission from your school's Institutional Review Board to do a psychological case study on a real person.

You might not be able to use the person’s real name, though. Even if it’s not required, you may want to use a pseudonym for them to make sure that their identity and privacy are protected.

To do a case study on a real person you know, you’ll need to interview them and possibly talk to other people who know them well, like friends and family.

If you choose to do a case study on a real person, make sure that you fully understand the ethics and best practices, especially informed consent. Work closely with your instructor throughout your project to ensure that you’re following all the rules and handling the project professionally.

APA. Guidelines for submitting case reports .

American Psychological Association.  Ethical principles of psychologists and code of conduct, including 2010 and 2016 amendments .

Rolls, G. (2019). Classic Case Studies in Psychology: Fourth Edition . United Kingdom: Taylor & Francis.

By Kendra Cherry, MSEd Kendra Cherry, MS, is a psychosocial rehabilitation specialist, psychology educator, and author of the "Everything Psychology Book."

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Case Studies of Fictional Characters