A more interesting psychological question: Is depth of individual psyche preferable to simplicity? Further analysis - can a fictional character have as much depth as a living person [especially within your experience in writing]?
I think the goal of many writers is to make characters as real as people, I guess whether it is achievable is in what you say a “real person” is like. But that doesn’t necessarily mean depth, perhaps. There are many people in our lives that we know very little about, despite the fact we might consider them close. Just because one doesn’t know a parent’s or friend’s dream job when they were 5 or something, doesn’t make them less real. There is something about people, no matter how simple they might appear, that still makes it very difficult to say that they aren’t real. We go in with an assumption of depth that isn’t necessarily the same as when we go into a novel.
So depending on who you are, the model you prefer for psyche probably has to do with how you experience yourself or others. Simple does not beat complex, simple is just different from complex, and I personally feel that everyone has some “ideal mixture” of complex and simple thoughts/feelings/etc. that makes the preferred individual psyche. Maybe. If that makes any sense.
