ABSTRACT. The biographical research that we once ran on 25 eminent Romanian dramatists (scanning 140 years, from 1850 to 1990) came up with a figure of 18(72%) cases of psychopathology; we now extended the research to 50 dramatists (i.e. 25 new names, 20 of them being initially described as primarily poets or fiction writers) and thus we made some adjustments: 19(76%) new cases of psychopathology, 37(74%) cases in all. Given that the 1991 Epidemiological Catchment Area survey (involving interviews at five different sites with about 20,000 individuals typifying the entire United States population) revealed a lifetime prevalence of 32% for any psychiatric disorder, we will not fail to see that (eminent) drama makes a huge difference (smaller than eminent poetry, though – which goes up to 81.54% in our statistics), if we allow for a certain degree of diagnostic uncertainty (partly caused by the change in age and continent). pp. 126–136
Keywords: Romanian drama; eminent dramatists; psychopathology; biopsychosocial approach; artistic creativity