The stereotype of the tortured artist battling internal demons is much older than the controlled study. Aristotle declared that ‘No great mind has ever existed without a touch of madness’ and Lord Byron wrote frankly, ‘We of the craft are all crazy. Some are affected by gaiety, others by melancholy, but all are more or less touched’.
But in recent years science has sought to test the theory that artists tend to be emotionally sensitive, introverted and anxious and to identify the ways in which personality and mental health can help or hinder creative production..
