Principles and methods of writing psychological critique using the approach of existential psychology

Psychological critique is one of the main approaches to dealing with literary works. The author's psychoanalysis, the study of the psychological characteristics of the characters, and the psychoanalysis of the readers are the main practical fields of this type. For the critic of psychological criticism, there is no limit to the use of different schools of psychology. For this reason, there is less of an approach in psychology that has not been used. The existential school is a stream of psychological studies that was influenced by existentialism in the second half of the twentieth century and soon became one of the most important branches of mental analysis. From this psychological point of view, death, freedom, loneliness and emptiness are the most important human concerns that the quality of subjects' confrontation with these concerns is the cause of their health or mental disorder. Given that in recent decades’ attention to existential concerns in the creation of works of art and literature has been given special attention, and that existential psychology is the main basis for the use of the existentialism in people's lives. In this article, by using a descriptive-analytical method has been made an attempt to examine the use of this psychological approach in a critical study of literary works, especially the literary type of the novel. The results show that the issues of death, responsibility, choice, loneliness, emptiness, originality and suffering are the main issues that should be considered in the critique of psychology with an existential approach.