Is it appropriate for a supervisor to suggest: "Why do a PhD, why not write a novel?"?

I am one year into my PhD research, a group supervisor of PhD students recently asked me the above question as I was inquiring on ethical and methodological problems with my research. It had been suggested, by someone else, that I could resolve the ethical and methodological problems by utilizing myself as a subject, which could be envisaged seeing the sensitive psycho-analytic area of investigation.