Literature and neurosis

Modern era dramatists throve by making their characters: neurotics, like Hedda Gabler, Miss Julie and Blanche de Bois; schizophrenics like Enrico Quarto and Willy Loman; eccentrics, like Mutter Courage and Karla Zachanasian; absurdists, like Pozzo and Hamm; and madmen, like Romulus der Grosse and the Marquis de Sade

Shaw probed the trick in "St Joan" where one of the characters remarks that Joan is mad, and the other character replies, "What we need now is some mad people." Emma Bovary, a generation earlier, epitomised all human tragedy, in reality and in fiction, when she said, "It's all a matter of nerves." Hence, all Achilles's wrath, Oedipus' blinding himself, Agave's frenzy, Hamlet's frustration, Lady Macbeth's hysteria, Lear's madness, plus the agonies of the characters in the catalogue of the modern theatre above, are a mere matter of nerves

When Arthur Miller in 1947 found that Tennessee Williams' "A StreetcarNamed Desire" proved a highly dramatic play on basis of its main character Blance de Bois being neurotic, Miller rushed in 1948 to write a play which also proved a great success on basis of having its main character Willey Loman schizophrenic