People working in creative fields are often perceived as being more sensitive than their conventionally-employed counterparts, but is there any truth to the trope of the tortured artist?
Creatives routinely expose their inner states to public opinion and potential judgement, and it would be easy to attribute the tortured artist trope to this relative discrepancy in exposure. However, the correlations between creativity and mental illness run deeper than a vague association between artists’ feelings and the public consumption of their work.
