Carl Jung had an interesting theory about creative fiction and its relationship with an audience. He called it ‘participation mystique’, and in essence it was this: A writer or an artist writes something intense and creative, and the reader understands it as if he or she were the actual writer.
It’s as though the writer has projected all kinds of unconscious material onto the fiction. Jung goes on to say that fiction becomes fact, and that the most bizarre experiences can take place within the narrative because the reader is experiencing it directly. There is no need to suspend disbelief because the reader is ‘in’ the story.