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Psychological thriller is a specific sub-genre of the wide-ranging thriller genre. However, this genre often incorporates elements from the mystery and drama genre in addition to the typical traits of the thriller genre. Also, occasionally this genre will border into the also wide-ranging Horror genre.

Generally, thrillers focus on plot over character, and thus emphasize intense, physical action over the character's psyche. Psychological thrillers tend to reverse this formula to a certain degree, emphasizing the characters just as much, if not more so, than the plot.

The suspense created by psychological thrillers often comes from two or more characters preying upon one another's minds, either by playing deceptive games with the other or by merely trying to demolish the other's mental state.

Sometimes the suspense comes from within one solitary character where characters must resolve conflicts with their own minds. Usually, this conflict is an effort to understand something that has happened to them. These conflicts are made more vivid with physical expressions of the conflict in the means of either physical manifestations, or physical torsions of the characters at play.

Deconstruction of the definition

• Psychological – Elements that are related to the mind or processes of the mind; they are mental rather than physical in nature.

• Thriller – A genre of fiction that attempts to "thrill" its audience by placing characters at great risk. This constant unease throughout the story makes the narrative suspenseful to the reader by creating a tense atmosphere.

• Psychological + Thriller – By combining these two terms, the definition changes to a narrative that makes the characters exposed to danger on a mental level rather than a physical one. Characters are no longer reliant on physical strength to overcome their brutish enemies (which is often the case in typical action-thrillers), but rather are reliant on their mental resources, whether it be by battling wits with a formidable opponent or by battling for equilibrium in the character's own mind.

Literary devices and techniques

• Stream of consciousness - a literary technique which seeks to describe an individual's point of view by giving the written equivalent of the character's thought processes. In psychological thrillers, the narrative tries to manifest the character's psyche through word usage, descriptions, or visuals.

• First-person narrative - a literary technique in which the story is narrated by one or more of the characters, who explicitly refers to him or herself in the first person, that is, "I". This direct involvement that the characters have with the story in turn makes the reader more involved with the characters themselves, and thus able to understand the mechanics of the characters' minds.

• Back-story - the history behind the situation extant at the start of the main story. This deepens the psychological aspect of the story since the reader is able to more fully understand the character; more specifically, what the character's motivations are and how his past has shaped his current cognitive perceptions.

Themes

Many psychological thrillers have emerged over the past years, all in various media (film, literature, radio, etc). Despite these very different forms of representation, general trends have appeared throughout the narratives. Some of these consistent themes include:

• Reality – The quality of being real. Characters often try to determine what is true and what is not within the narrative.

• Perception – A person's own interpretation of the world around him through his senses. Often characters misperceive the world around them, or their perceptions are altered by outside factors within the narrative (see Unreliable narrator).

• Mind – The human consciousness; the location for personality, thought, reason, memory, intelligence and emotion. The mind is often used as a location for narrative conflict, where characters battle their own minds to reach a new level of understanding or perception.

• Existence/Purpose - The object for which something exists; an aim or a goal humans strive towards to understand their reason for existence. Characters often try to discover what their purpose is in their lives and the narrative's conflict often is a way for the characters to discover this purpose.

• Identity - The definition of one's self. Characters often are confused about or doubt who they are and try to discover their true identity.

• Death - The cessation of life. Characters either fear or have a fascination with death.

Philosophical issues

With its intense focus on psychological issues such as mental processes, behavior, and human interaction, psychological thrillers often touch upon several philosophical issues. These theoretical and conceptual ideas usually focus on humanity's role in the universe.

Metaphysics

Metaphysics - The most dominant philosophical area present within psychological thrillers since it tries to explain the world and define reality, a task that psychological thrillers try to do themselves. There are specific areas within this broad category that these thrillers focus on:

• Existentialism - Regards human existence as determined by the individual and his or her own perceptions and beliefs. This is not to be confused with nihilism. Humans are entirely free from any controlling factors and are responsible for what they make of themselves according to existentialism—our existence precedes our essence of being. Psychological thrillers often include characters that lose the ability to make meaning in their lives; their collapsed system of ethics destroys his or her sense of security. At this point, he or she can only rely on his or her own mind while the world around remains uncertain and mysterious. Pulp fiction and noir films often makes this the central theme of their stories—as the characters are intertwined in events where the result is moral ambiguity, and they are forced to create their own meaning in the face of an absurd world.

• Determinism - Every event in which the character is involved, including cognition and action, is causally determined by an unbroken chain of prior occurrences. This concept creates characters that are desperate and feel hopeless since they are unable to change what is occurring around them, that is, the world is out of their control. (See also Causality).

• Fatalism - Similar to determinism, fatalism is the view that human deliberation and actions are pointless and ineffectual in determining events, because whatever will be will be, regardless of our actions. In psychological thrillers, characters fight a losing battle to gain control of their own lives in a meaningless and chaotic world. This is often integrated with existentialism.

• Ontology - Tries to determine what truly exists and what is fabricated by asking the question "what exists?" Characters in psychological thrillers ask questions of this nature that sometimes result in answers more confusing than the questions.

• Dualism - The view that the world surrounding us is divided into two separate entities: mind and matter. Often in psychological thrillers, characters find it difficult to separate these two elements. As a result, characters are unable to determine what is physically present and what is a fabrication of their minds.

Ethics

Ethics - The investigation of what is right and what is wrong. Characters within psychological thrillers often struggle with this determination. They often face the dilemma where both right and wrong seem the same, and the boundaries between the two are blurred into an unrecognizable grey area.

• Morality - The concepts of what is right and what is wrong. Often, these values are instilled in us by society. This can result in conflict; do we listen to our own conscience or follow societal standards?

• Moral skepticism - The concept that morals are always false or can never be determined.

• Existentialism - The concept that man is free to create his own determinations of what constitutes morality. Some claim this view to be first expressed by Friedrich Nietzsche.

• Nihilism - This concept argues that the world, and especially human existence, is without objective meaning, purpose, comprehensible truth, or essential value. This issue is often incorporated into the narrative with existentialism, determinism and fatalism. Characters often feel hopeless and depressed, living within a meaningless world.

Other philosophical issues

Kübler-Ross model - The process by which people deal with grief and tragedy. Psychological thrillers often feature this concept, having the characters explore the stages of denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Either the characters can not cope with the death of another character or can not accept their own death.

Examples

Screenwriters and directors of the genre

• Brad Anderson – Works effectively in the psychological horror genre. He is the director of The Machinist and Session 9.

• Dario Argento – Italian director considered the master of giallo. He often create mysteries that are very psychological in nature, with the past of characters influencing their present actions, as in 4 mosche di velluto grigio, Tenebrae, Trauma and La sindrome di Stendhal.

• Park Chanwook - Korean director who significantly explored the genre in his "vengeance trilogy" (Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, Oldboy and Sympathy for Lady Vengeance).

• David Cronenberg – Canadian director who focuses on the psychological horrors of our minds. His storylines often make issues of the mind explicit, as in The Brood, Scanners, Videodrome, Dead Ringers and Spider.

• Brian De Palma – Infuses eroticism with the thriller genre. Often uses the motifs of doubling and splitting in the characters minds, as in Sisters, Obsession, Dressed to Kill, Body Double and Raising Cain.

• David Fincher – Dark and ominous thrillers that focus on the psychology of men, as in Se7en and Fight Club.

• Alfred Hitchcock – The master of suspense, Hitchcock often applied Freudian concepts to his thrillers, as in Rebecca, Spellbound, Vertigo, Psycho, Marnie and Rope.

• Richard Kelly – Director who examined many of the themes illustrated above in the film Donnie Darko.

• Stanley Kubrick - His films are characterized by a formal visual style and attention to detail – often combining elements of surrealism and expressionism that give the viewers a feeling of discomfort, such as in 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Shining, Eyes Wide Shut and A Clockwork Orange.

• David Lynch – Surrealistic director whose mysteries are usually puzzles of the mind. Both the audience and the characters themselves must figure out what is real and what is not, especially in Inland Empire, Lost Highway, Eraserhead and Mulholland Drive.

• Christopher Nolan – British-American director whose narrative structures often reflect the mental construction of the characters, as in The Dark Knight, Memento, Following, and The Prestige.

• Roman Polanski – Polish director whose thrillers focus on the alienation and isolation of the characters, as in Repulsion and Le Locataire.

• M. Night Shyamalan - Indian-American director well-known for making psychological thrillers which often have a twist ending in them. Successfully executed the psychological thriller in The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable.

Examples in film

Examples in literature

• Patricia Highsmith - Highsmith's novels usually focus on troubled young men who are either sociopathic or emotionally unstable; throughout each story the protagonist is somehow drawn into a murky murder case, and must contend with persistent policemen and suspicious friends. Her most famous character is the charming con man and serial murderer Tom Ripley who, over the course of five books, successfully kills nine people.

• Desmond Cory - Cory's popular novels have been made into successful films (The Mark of the Phoenix, Deadfall) and a television series (Circe Complex). Cory explored many different aspects of the psychological thriller, featuring a wide spectrum of characters that ranged from the jewel-thief to the terrorist.

• Jonathan Kellerman - Kellerman's Alex Delaware novels often deal with various matters of criminal psychology.

• Robert Banfelder - Banfelder has written a series of ten novels about serial murder and has given expert opinion to many published interviews about serial killings. Although Robert Banfelder's writings are categorized as fiction, his extensive research and case work with serial killings he is often interviewed when serial or pattern murders remain unsolved or the frequencies increase.

• Lynn Tincher - Tincher has written a series of novels about psychological manipulation and serial murder.

• Melanie Wells - Unlike her contemporaries, Wells has taken a different approach to the genre by adding supernatural elements. Her novels, such as When The Day of Evil Comes, The Soul Hunter and My Soul to Keep, feature the psychological mind games of Peter Terry - a demon who seeks to steal his victim's peace of mind and hope.

• Mary Higgins Clark - Clark's novels typically focus on a successful woman caught up in the diaboloical games of men, who are usually either psychotic or sexually perverse. The crimes in her stories often involve children in some way, and occasionally deal with child telepathy.

• Nicci French - The pseudonym of husband-and-wife team Nicci Gerrard and Sean French. Their novels often revolve around a young female protagonist who is either targeted by or is suspected of being a psychopathic killer. The stories are quite unique in that they focus just as much, if not more so, on the victims of crime rather than the actual criminals.

• Stephen King - Although his books Carrie, Cycle of the Werewolf, Thinner and others are considered as horror novels, his book often focus on the protagonist(s) and antagonist(s), their origins, backgrounds for character and certain activities.

See also

• Psychology
• Psychological horror

External links

• IMDb - Psychological Thriller at the Internet Movie Database